


i'm all bloody knuckles (longing for home)

by insanetwin



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: About Time AU, F/F, No Curse, Time Travel, not canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 19:27:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 40,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6437284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insanetwin/pseuds/insanetwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story about mothers, children, and time travel. Or alternatively, how Emma Swan finds a place to belong. </p><p>[ i'm all bloody knuckles, longing for home // if it weren't for second chances, we'd all be alone ]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. only something in me understands

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on this story for MONTHS and finally have decided to just let it go free. This is more of an intro, since all the other chapters will be longer. The inspiration came from ABOUT TIME but it's not going to follow the movie in any sense. Hope you enjoy!

So I lived so little  
In the real sun of the present,  
Only breathing the passing air  
Just enough to regret, to desire, to forget

Nicole Houssa from "The Girl My Other Self" 

* * *

 

 

At age fourteen, Emma Swan does not have many belongings. She has an old baby blanket, a cheap red leather jacket that she slipped off a metal rack and ran away in, and a few good memories. The rest has a price or is owned by someone else. At age fourteen, in one of the worst moments of her life – the heavy thunder of her foster dad’s feet mounting the stairs behind her, two at a time, his hands grasping at just the edges of her red jacket – she darts into one of the small dark hiding spots she knows to be in the house and shuts the door. Tucking her arms around her knees, she closes her eyes and disappears.

When she opens them again, she is still in a small dark place, but the floors are not pounding with footsteps and the room outside is completely unfamiliar to her. The floor is full of light and the walls are a soft yellow. There are coats hanging around her, smelling normal like perfume and clean fabric.

A creaking floorboard pushes Emma to her hands and knees, to look for any danger through the crack in the door. But the shadows are all stretched thin and harmless across the floor. Not her foster father. Not a bigger, angry kid.

No, it is a woman. She wanders past the door, calling her name softly.

“Emma?” she calls, and Emma stills more from the smile in her voice than the name. “Come on, honey, where are you?”

The woman is turned away from her, face tilted too far away for her features to be distinguishable, but Emma can see the faint curve of her jaw and her shoulder blades and the short black hair that she vaguely remembers. Remembers like the small bed pushed in the corner - her bed. Like all the toys they bought for her, and kept when she left. For their new child.

Breathing in sharply, Emma’s heart tumbles like a suitcase down a long flight of stairs, beating loud and brash and disbelieving in her chest. But it can’t - it can’t.

“Come out, honey.” The woman cooed, her voice cozy and sweet as though they were only playing a game of hide and seek.

Emma knows this moment: knows the sound of her mother, (the first one that promised to keep her), knows the creaking floorboards, and this small dark place she used to hide in while waiting to be found again.

When Emma looks down, her hands are small and unrecognizable. The hands of a child. When her mother calls for her again, she feels reality close all around her.

It’s not real, it can’t be. She’s either dreaming or dead. But she can’t really be _here_.

Neither thought scares her very much. She can hear only the soft warm sound of her mother’s voice, the future that she never got to live unfurling in front of her like a closed room she is not afraid to walk into.

In that dark closet, smiling, Emma closes her eyes without really thinking about it, and slips away again.

When she opens her eyes again, she is returned to the place of pounding hands and a screaming red voice.

It is a memory she will never return to again. But at age fourteen, Emma learns there is something more between the choice of dreaming and dying.

***

At age seventeen, Emma still has only a few belongings. She has a red jacket and a baby blanket and a few good memories she can visit in the dark with her eyes closed. The rest are lessons.

She knows about the metal tumblers in a lock and how to move them around until a door pops opens. She knows how to push up from chained fences and barbed wire, how to brush off red stinging pain and keep on running. She knows now that the back of a car can feel safer than a foster home.

At age seventeen, when Neal wakes up groggily in the back of yet another stolen car, she learns one more lesson.

It takes her six months to learn it. But after all the long hours on the road with the sun in her hair and all those nights in the hotel rooms with the feeling of something large and warm filling her chest, she ends up alone in the back of a police car with handcuffs around her wrists.

There, in the dark, with her eyes still wet and her hands trembling, against her ribs her heart beats a lesson. Love gives you _nothing_.  

She stays in the back of the car for only the amount of time it takes for the car to pass through a dark, unlit street. With only the faint glow of porch lights from distant, unknowable houses to shine into the car windows, Emma closes her eyes and disappears.

When she opens them, she is lying in the back seat of the Bug. The car is parked in an empty dirt road, the windows still dark with the early grey morning.

Emma only vaguely remembers where they are, but one glance across the empty sprawling farmland tells her that it is at least three weeks and a thousand miles between her and that police station.

Neal is still asleep in the front seat, quietly snoring. His head is tucked against his arm, fogging up the window with his slow breathing. Her heart beats quicker, remembering the lost empty feeling she had felt with handcuffs around her wrist and her future plummeting into nothing.

And in just as little as three weeks, she will be back there again.

Three weeks from this warm, cozy morning where Neal will slowly wake up, stiff and bleary-eyed, and smile back at her; three weeks from coffee and a stolen road map spread out across the steering wheel.

Three weeks, and she will be directed to the back of a police car by a hard hand and a voice she's heard so many times before, firm and pitying, delivering yet another hungry-eyed kid to a cell.

Staring at the back of his dark head, she listens to his calm breathing and feels something wild and unruly buck inside of her. Something angry and vengeful. She could close her eyes and send herself all the way back to the beginning, duck out of the very moment she met him and cut herself out of the last few months out of his life.

But she starts gathering her belongings instead. To disappear would mean to be erased completely; to cease mattering at all. Not even as a vague memory.

Hurt as she is, she is not ready to be forgotten.

Scavenging the car for everything of value, she stuffs clothes, food, and money all into her brown pack. She takes his old jacket (it’s warmer than hers), but leaves the necklace he had given her weeks before. It hangs off the rearview mirror with all the other useless things they’ve stolen.

Before Neal wakes, she steps forward out into the cold windy morning and shivers. The sun glints off the long road behind her. It winds back for miles and miles through large weedy fields and distant struggling towns, but with nothing else to do, and nowhere else to go, she starts walking again.

Traffic roars in the distance. The cold air numbs her fingers. She shrugs the sliding backpack higher on her shoulders and keeps walking.

She slips into a bathroom at the nearest house in town, locking the door behind her and turning off all the lights. A loud, angry voice is slowly approaching her, so she closes her eyes and returns to the present with absolutely no idea where it will take her. What it will do to her (the thought doesn’t scare her very much).

When she opens her eyes, it is to the ceiling of another stolen car and three weeks of new memories. Neal is not in either of them and the certainty of his absence presses a difficult feeling up against her ribs. As she quietly rolls to her side and closes her eyes, she convinced herself it’s relief.

But her new memories whirl inside her head, spinning wordlessly like a vinyl without a needle, all her running, fighting, and scraping by blurring together. In the back of a strange, unfamiliar car, a terrible loneliness wells inside of her, trapping her breath at the back of her throat.

Turning away from the window she tucks her hard arms around her chest, seeking some kind of warmth in the back seats. She knows only the security of her own arms and her red jacket.

Emma gradually falls asleep to the thought of arms that are not her own. They wrap around her ribs and press her softly, gently against the warm thought of her future. A future with someone warm and kind and gentle, who will hold her until she falls asleep.

***

A month later she throws up in the bathroom of a bleak-looking diner.

She is still seventeen, but at this point has wised up to how her life works. When she pees on the stick and waits the three lonely minutes alone in a small stall, she isn’t surprised by the small pink plus sign flashing up at her. Her life is always moving up, and up to more difficult things.

Blinking back tears, she stares up at the white walls of the bathroom stall and goes through all of her possibilities. They hum like bees inside her head, moving around in noisy incomplete circles.

She could go to a clinic. She could go back to the first night in that hotel room; walk away and make all of this disappear. It would be as easy as closing her eyes.

But instead, she learns to steal better.

She learns to be quick and unsuspecting, to fight her way out of any trap that she falls into. And when she is caught, she closes her eyes and let's the world shift and flicker away, just a red shadow darting quickly across her eyelids.

She doesn’t let herself think about her life until the baby is born. And then not for quite some time after that; she lets all thoughts of her future leave her in one great breath as she stares up at the ceiling, aching and so young, (so much younger than she had ever felt before) as she listens to the whole room tremble with the red spasming screams of her newborn baby.

_Her baby boy._

The doctor is patient and pitying. He tucks the child into a warm blanket and holds him out for her to take, but she lays there as cold and solid as stone, watching the small body wiggle towards her, eager for warmth.

Against her ribs, her heart beats that lesson: _Love gives you nothing_.

And love is all she has.

She tells herself to say “No” and feels the words clip the bottom of her teeth on their way out, every part of her body freezing up when the doctor only nods and turns away from her again.

It is this memory she revisits the most. Staring up at the ceiling, wracked with pain and hands fisted, she imagines saying something else. She imagines holding him at least once.

But each time she does, even as time goes by, when she slips back into that aching, seventeen year old body, the same words press up against the fabric of her skin. _Love gives you nothing_.

So she watches her baby disappear behind that door again and again and again.

***

At age twenty three, Emma Swan has only a stolen car, her red jacket, and whatever small job she picks up on the road. She has given up any form of direction past a solid bed and a few crumbled dollars in her waist pocket. Her ears still ring with the red high screaming of her baby boy.

She doesn’t expect much more to her life than this.

So in a small town in Illinois, picking up tips as a waitress, Emma comes to a tumbling stop as she spots a six year old boy running past her feet on her way to pouring coffee.

Caught off guard, she bangs her hip against the counter and burns her hands with coffee.

But her eyes are following the boy, even as her hands set down the cups and find a towel to wipe up the spilled coffee, she doesn't look away as the boy clambers up onto a seat. He is small and thin-boned, his eyes a little too large for his face; they flash out across the room with bright curiosity. 

When they find her the world spins for a quick, impossible moment. She stares back with a hammering heart, those high, spasming cries echoing in her ears again.

“ _Henry_ ,” a voice calls. “What have I told you about running ahead of me?”

A woman stalks past her, cutting a sharp shape amongst all the yellow wallpaper and drooping, sleepy eyed customers.

She comes to a sudden stop in front of the boy, folding her arms hard over her chest as she bends to speak to him in a low and measured voice.

It’s a mother’s voice - the kind of voice Emma remembers hearing fly out to other children at playgrounds or in school yards, places where mothers who loved their children seemed to exist.

She can’t hear what the woman says, but when the boy nods, she taps two fingers against his bony chin and presses a quick kiss to the side of his forehead before sliding into the small space beside him. Watching them, Emma’s heart flutters like a bird trapped in her chest.

“Emma,” her boss snaps. “Get back to work.”

“Okay,” she calls back idly, and then nearly bumps into the counter again when the woman’s dark eyes find hers. Hastily, Emma looks away and busies herself with her delayed coffee orders, her cheeks warm and red.

But as she moves through the diner, pocketing her pen and pad, carrying plates and menus, she finds her attention slowly drifting back to the woman in the back. And that little boy.

There are just these small details. A familiar chin; those brown eyes; the shape of his forehead. He has a face with all the softened features that she believed were too sharp and severe in her own face.  

Thoughtlessly, she grabs a coffee pot and walks over.

The woman is flipping through something in her purse when Emma arrives at the table. “Can I get you more coffee?” Emma asks, hands trembling.

The woman looks up at her briefly and though it’s just a flash of movement, Emma feels suddenly aware of the crumbled, coffee stained apron she is wearing and the long hair she just threw up in a messy ponytail. It floods her cheeks with warmth.

“Very well,” the woman answers and primly holds the cup up for her. “And put a rush on our orders. We’re in a bit of a hurry.”

“Oh. Sure thing.” Emma pours the coffee, catches a touch of dark lipstick on the rim of the cup. “Anything else?”

“Momma, can I have hot chocolate?” The boy asks, wiggling in his seat.

His mother frowns. “I thought you wanted the hot cider, dear?”

“I changed my mind.”

“We don't have much time, we need to check with the car repair soon.” She sighs and glances down at the silver face of the watch on her wrist, but when she looks up at him again, she immediately softens. “Oh, alright. A hot chocolate for the monster over here. But get the rest of the food out already, it’s not like it's busy.”

Before Emma can even say anything more, the boy looks at her with eyes she feels she has seen a thousand times. “Cinnamon on top, please.”

“Okay.” Emma manages, and turns back with a heart beating too fast.

***

It's stupid. It's absolutely stupid. She has no way of knowing if that boy is actually the one she had six years ago, and no reason to find out. She wasn't a mother when she was seventeen and she's not one now.

But it hums loudly in her mind. In her lonely apartment with the old christmas lights from a few months ago still hanging over her window, tinkling in the haze of the streetlights, she finds herself dressing up for the cold and for the dark. Her heart clatters like her feet on the stairs. She knows this is stupid.

There is only one hotel in town. It has parchment colored wallpaper and a slow-dying air to it that breathes in every business out here in the middle of nowhere. She finds the room number on the computer and works a pin from her hair into the lock, pushing the door open only a few seconds later.

It swings inward to a dark, empty room. Emma enters cautiously, feeling blindly for a switch until the room floods with a dim, wane light. It is a small and tidy room with one bed and two suitcases.

Both suitcases are bulky things with zippers and hugely overstuffed compartments. One has only clothes, makeup and money, but the other is like opening the door to a house and walking in. It is full of photos and books and large folders bound shut with paper clips.

With numb fingers, Emma works on one of the paper clips. And then another, and another, moving quickly through all the alien-looking documents and unfamiliar reports until, finally, almost clumsily, she comes across a birth certificate.

She finds Henry's name. And then his mother’s. _Regina Mills_.

Her eyes blur with the rest, uncertain of where to look. But eventually she finds the hospital name and location and that date that has rolled over her head six times now and still sends her tumbling back to that cold white hospital room with those loud shaking screams echoing in her ear.

She stands there, heart beating so loudly in her ears that she doesn’t hear the door open behind her until it slams shut.

“What the _hell_ are you doing in here?” When Emma turns around, Regina is staring at her with black furious eyes, paralyzing her like one of those blue-tipped pins her last foster father used to use to keep bugs in glass display cases on his wall.

He would pin them swiftly, (painlessly, he would add dryly, exasperated) and watch their legs scuttle with the last of their life, dwindling in the seconds before they curled up into themselves.

Emma feels that frantic, last second life flashing in her heart as she watches Regina step closer, holding her son protectively behind her back.

 _Disappear, disappear,_ she thinks fretfully, but she can’t stop watching Regina as she slowly approaches, her expression becoming something smooth and dangerous when she notices the birth certificate in her hand.

“What are you doing with that?” she asks. Her voice sounds calm, but there is something hard and metalic about it - a threat.

Emma drops it clumsily.

“I wasn’t doing anything.” It’s a dumb impulse of an argument; it is exactly what she used to argue to her foster parents after a fight at school, still bruised and bleeding. It never worked then, either.

Regina raises a dark eyebrow. They are playing a dangerous game of bull shit, and Emma has a record of losing. But still, she can’t make herself move for the safety of a darker room.

With a quick squeeze of her hand, Regina sends Henry over to hide in the bathroom. Emma watches him go uneasily. When she looks back, Regina is close enough to skim her hand over the black canvas suitcase that carries all her clothes and money. It’s still unzipped.

“You’ve already looked through the one with all the money in it.” Regina sneers, tossing back the lid of the suitcase. All her clothes sit exposed to the dim light, neat and folded. Money sits in a folded leather pouch, untouched. Regina’s eyes narrow at her. “But you’re not looking for money, are you?”

“I didn't mean to be in here.” Emma swallows softly and steps back.

Regina smiles coldly. “Oh, you didn't mean to be in here? Which part alerted you to that - was it when you broke into my room, or when you got caught looking through all of this incredibly valuable paperwork?”

Emma can only watch, helpless, as Regina walks closer. The floorboards creak, the dim lights from the streetlights outside filling her face full of something harsh and cold.

“My mother sent you, didn’t she?” she utters.

“What?” Emma blanks, reeling. “No?”

Regina’s face seems to close off from her, but her eyes are wide and dark like the room all around them, full of a sharp, edgy anger.

Slowly - so slowly that Emma nearly doesn't see it - Regina’s hand slides into one of the smaller compartments that Emma had overlooked. Her fingers are hesitant at first as they touch the small black handle of a gun before they grip it tight. A warning.

Emma raises her hands instinctively, palms flat up. “I really don’t know your mother,” she hears herself saying, but the danger of the situation seems to exist somewhere else, in some remote place that doesn’t quite touch her, because her heart is not beating from the fear of the gun.

Instead, it opens with the fear in Regina’s eyes, with all those slamming doors and pounding footsteps - an aching, bottomless thing that circles and circles and never ends. The fear of a child, the constant loss and losing.

“Then why _this_ suitcase?” She snaps, baring her teeth, but her hand trembles around the gun.

“I was looking for something,” Emma breathes, unable to look away. “But I don't work for your mother. I promise - I don't know her.”

The gun flicks restlessly against her hip. “But you could be lying,” she says, and seems to accept the full weight of that thought all at once, letting out a shaky breath. “How would I know? She could have sent you. She warned me of that, at least - how easy it would be to find me. And she did, didn’t she? She sent you - you are here for him.”

Regina's voice is almost completely breathless now and her hand is shaking, and though Emma knows she should disappear, she can't. She could close her eyes and make this whole memory collapse and flatten into nothing.

But she knows the fear in those eyes. It is something alike to her own. She has sheltered it in her own heart, made iron out of her bones.

“I’m sorry,” Emma finds herself saying. She means for the words to somehow reach the girl already long gone, hidden in the years behind them, but she can only travel through her own memories, so the words fall flat in the cool space between them.

Regina takes it as an admission of guilt. The fear in her unfolds like some grey, tumbling ocean, reaching so far and wide from inside that it blurs all lines of an existing shore.

“She can’t have him,” she snarls viciously, haggardly and lifts the gun on a shaky, dangerous impulse.

Emma steps back, closes her eyes and disappears.

She reappears in her apartment, to the evening light creeping through her rusty window and the last few minutes replaying in her head, again and again.

And though that birth certificate makes her heart beat hard like a hammer against cloth, what she can’t stop thinking about are those dark, haunted eyes and that cornered, run-away look.

***

The next morning, Emma finds Regina and Henry walking in the diner again; she delivers two steaming hot plates to their tables and ignores the burning red of her fingers so that she can be quick enough to grab two menus before any of the other waitresses do.

She comes up to them smiling, “Hey guys, welcome back!”

Regina is busy finger-combing the slight curl from the back of her son’s hair but at the sound of her voice her eyes flutter up with surprise. Her disapproval deepens the lines in her face.

Emma cringes, steps back. “I’ll- uh, just show you to two to your seats now.”

As Emma sets down forks and napkins, Henry and Regina shuffle in, side by side, shoulder to shoulder.

“How has your day been so far?” She manages quietly, glancing at them.

A long sigh slowly unwinds from Regina as she slides a napkin into Henry’s waiting palm. “Well, we’re going to be stuck in this hell hole for another four days, so it can’t get much worse.”

Even as Emma tries for a sympathetic frown, her thoughts flutter with the chance of more time. “Car trouble, huh?”

“Apparently,” She sighs. For a moment, she looks exhausted, her brow folding into hard lines that isn't eased by the weary touch of her fingers, hiding the strain. But by the time Henry looks back up at her she has smoothed out her face and straightened her shoulders, airily flicking back her hair with the tips of fingers. “Tell the waitress what you want to eat, dear.”

Henry nods and ducks behind the menu, but Emma doesn't look away from Regina.

Emma might not have many people in her life and no one who would chase her out across the country, but she has traveled up flights of stairs and through her own memories to escape the havoc that comes within the hands of some of the parents she has known.

Regina has known it, too. Emma can see it in her eyes as they flash up to her.

“Did you get that, dear?” She asks with a cold tilt of her head. Emma blinks and glances down at her empty pad of paper until Regina sighs, “Apple pancakes with whip cream.”

Emma musters up a smile. “Nice. And for you?”

A chargin look crosses her face, flushing her cheeks. “No, that is for me.”

“Right,” Emma hides the beginning of a smile with the pad of paper and nods. “And what about you, buddy?”

“French toast!” He grins.

“Awesome,” she manages, and turns around before Regina’s glare can turn her into ashes.

She is back at the table only a few minutes later, though. She can’t seem to stay too far away, even when the coffee cups are full and the food served, the irritation of her other customers glaring at her from behind their flat mouths.

She keeps coming back to two strangers who can’t possibly become anything more to her.  

She is there to watch Regina dab at something on Henry’s cheek, watch the way Henry eats daintily with both a knife and a fork, and how Regina’s mouth flickers up faintly with pleasure after she takes a bite into her pancakes.  

When she comes back around again, Regina hands her a credit card with a faint smile as though she is aware of Emma's clumsy attention, so it’s not until Emma is at the counter again, thumbing over the long numbers on the card that her mind flashes back to those dark, runaway eyes and that trembling hand over the handle of a gun.

Staring down at the credit card, Emma feels a worry ticking inside of her like the inside of a clock, whirring loudly with gears and other sharp clicking things. Because credit cards can be tracked and people can be found so easily.

Had she used the credit card yesterday too?

Edging her teeth along the bottom of her lip, Emma tips her head back to look through the window.

Regina is still waiting with her hands on either side of a coffee cup, face turned towards the window where the light falls evenly across the table and her shining dark hair. Her thumbs are hooked over the rim, but Emma knows it won’t be long before she starts tapping her fingers and looking around again.

Groaning softly, Emma ducks into the back of the diner where her boss’s dark office sits. It smells dull and dusty when she closes her eyes and again when she opens them, but stepping out, she can see Regina and Henry at a different table and in different clothes.

In her hand, the same credit card.

Pulling in a deep, exasperated breath, Emma makes a decision right then.

She is going to save Regina Mills’ ass.

It’s not all that difficult - she snatches a different card from one of the other tables (some gross guy with a mustache and heavy eyebrows) and makes them pay a little extra for that one day. When she flashes back to the present, some dull dude with a bad accent erases a part of Regina Mills’ trail too.

But by the time she is returning to their table, she is worried about Regina Mills again.

She’s not going to get away with this. Not if her mom does send some tracker after her. Not if she keeps using her credit card. She’ll need more help than just this.

“What if I showed you around town a little bit after my shift?” Emma says in one big nervous breath once she reaches the table again.

Startled dark eyes jump up to her. “What?” Regina asks, setting down her coffee cup.

“Yeah, you know - since you’re going to be staying here for a little while? If you need to go grocery shopping or something, I could show you around.” Emma’s fingers nervously comb through the stray wisps of blonde hair swaying beside her ear. “Anyway, my shift is going to be done in just fifteen minutes, if you want to wait.”

Emma, at this point in her life, is familiar with a closing door. She can see it in Regina's expression, in the slight narrowing of her eyes and the way her wrist rolls in an agitated flick before she checks the time on her wrist watch.

But Henry interrupts. “Do you know where a park is?”

And because she nods and Henry grins, Regina softens. “Very well,” she sighs. “We will wait.”

Emma leaves then, stepping out of the scene. But her chest is full of the awe that comes with the balancing act some mothers do, working tirelessly for the continuation of their child’s happiness.

It is something Emma has never experienced - her childhood too quick and vague and violent for any sort of love to ever take hold of her -but Regina and Henry seem destined to play out parts of her life she has never even known.

In that moment Emma makes a decision. She is going to make sure Regina and Henry leave here safe; that Regina Mills escapes her mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading <3


	2. in time of all sweet things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who has read and reviewed!

  

"Together we trace out the trail away from doom. There isn't hope, there is a trail. I follow you. _”_

Richard Siken, from _War of the Foxes_

* * *

 

The town is small and thin, spread out across acres of farmland and sullen-looking houses that blink out from the edge of their property with patched-up metal roofs. On the wet, rainy sidewalk, the cement reflects back watery patches of the sky. On their way to the store, a sleepy-eyed Henry drops his head and is immediately pulled up into his mother’s arms, tucked securely between neck and shoulder.

Emma can’t help but watch them. They look so natural, so accustomed to each other that for the first time Emma thinks maybe she was wrong, maybe love really isn't as complicated or impossible as she thought it was as a child.

“I think we might have to wait a little while on the park, dear.” Regina gently jiggles Henry higher up on her hip, her hands supporting the back of his legs like the strong iron ropes that keeps bridges from buckling. “While he dozes, I’ll just pick a few things up for dinner.”

Emma just nods, missing her moment to speak; she is focused on how peaceful Henry looks, his eyes closed, and his breathing even; how Regina’s smile seems to soften her entire face.  

When Regina glances up at her, Emma looks away, pushing forward into the cold.

“So, the store is over here,” she says and moves warily past all the rows of cars and shopping carts. Regina just follows, her footsteps quiet against the wet sidewalk.

But once they pass the doors, the tension flags. There’s a certain business to Regina once she steps inside a crowded building, something sharp and impersonal. It rises up in her shoulders, makes her walk quicker and talk differently. She lifts a sleepy Henry off her hip and into one of the child seats in a shopping cart.

“I’ll be quick. I just need a few things,” she assures. And since Emma is still figuring out a direction in her vague, unclear plans to help, she ends up following her.

She grabs a smaller cart. “I have a few things to get too.”

Regina doesn’t stop her. In fact, she doesn’t seem to notice Emma at all. She walks solitarily through the aisles of food and garish slick floors, reluctantly putting things in her cart only after scrutinizing them thoroughly, as if searching for soft bruises.

Emma trails behind her. Her cart is full of the usual lonely frozen meals that stocks her fridge. She doesn’t think Regina notices her at all until she goes to grab a bag of Beef Jerky and finds Regina staring back at her with a skeptical eyebrow and narrowed eyes.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing,” Regina purses her lips, exasperated. “I'm just wondering how a human can function with an eating habit like yours.”  

Blinking, Emma frowns, unsure how to respond. “Um,” she glances at Regina’s cart. It is, of course, full of fresh fruit and dairy-products-that-are-not-dairy. “Wow, alright. Sorry I don’t eat like a health-nut, lady.”

Regina ignores her. “I don't even see fruit or vegetables in here, it’s just sugar cereal and frozen food.” She sighs with the soft weariness of a mother. “Didn't your mother teach you how to cook, Miss Swan?”

Emma can’t help but balk at that. The pain is still there, stirring restlessly; she has taught herself so many things, but cooking still holds some motherly secret that is completely unknowable to her.

“No,” she answers flatly and refuses to give any more than the hurt that spasms involuntarily at the corner of her mouth.

Regina must still see it in her face because her expression loses some of its sharpness, retreating from the moment to rework some inner calculation. It makes Emma's shoulders jerk up defensively, her cheeks tickling suddenly with the red collar of her jacket.

She glances spitefully at Regina’s cart, “At least this stuff is _useful_. What you’re buying now won’t last you very long, not when you're on the on the road. What are you gonna do when you're in a car and can't find a place to eat? Or when you can't afford to stop?”

The last bit leaves without thinking. Glancing up, she finds Regina’s face hardening, closing off to her like aluminum blinds on a window.

But her words have hit a nerve. Emma can see it in the hesitant glance Regina sends to Henry. She doesn’t know the place Regina is running from, but she knows there must be miles and miles behind her; she must have spent at least some of her time on the road hungry and exhausted, looking for a place to stop.

“Why don’t you try it?” Emma asks and cuts the edge of the plastic with her thumbnail.

“What? No, certainly not.” But her surprise softens her face, thinning her exasperation. “You're not really going to open that in here, are you?”

“Why wouldn't I?”

“Well then you'd have to buy it.” Emma just stares flatly at her and Regina sighs and flicks back her dark hair. “Oh very well, I suppose I can't stop you from that. But there's still no way I'm going to eat it.”

Emma wiggles open the packet, fishing for a piece. “It tastes better than it looks.”

“You want me to put faith in your taste? You have a bag of frozen peas in here.”

“Leave my poor food choices alone if you won't give it a try yourself,” Emma says and extends a generous hand toward her only to be swatted away immediately, Regina’s hand dropping quick out of nowhere like a bird swooping for a mouse. “Ow - hey, come on!”  

“I told you,” Regina says tersely. “I’m not trying it.”

Emma sighs and looks to Henry. He is more awake now, blinking at them both, aware of the odd behavior.

Emma smiles at him, “How about you, buddy? You wanna try this?”

Henry’s face lights up as he flashes out his palm. Regina glares flatly, but she won’t let her child eat something she hasn’t tried first so after a small pause she sighs and holds out her palm.

She accepts the piece with only the tips of her fingers and bites into it with the same grave, wary acceptance she has faced every offer Emma has made to her, covering her mouth with a hand as she watches Emma with narrowed eyes.

“Well?”

“It’s not _completely_ disgusting, I’ll give you that.” Regina decides, but still hands the rest of the piece to Emma and brushes off her fingers. “One piece,” she warns to Henry. “One, and that’s it.”

Henry nods solemnly, but turns his sly, secretive smile to Emma so she ends up handing him two pieces instead, her heart pulled to those familiar, dark eyes.

But when she glances back to see if she’s been caught, she finds Regina slyly hiding a few bags of Beef Jerky beneath all the other things in her cart. Like mother, like son - both little sly tricksters.

Before she can stop herself, Emma snorts, barely managing to cover her mouth when Regina startles and looks up at her with wide eyes.

It seems for a moment that Regina will put all the bags back on the shelf and turn away from her, but instead she only purses her lips and straightens, walking back to Emma with narrowed eyes.

“Shut up.”

“If you want anymore recommendations, I'm right here.”

“I’d rather choke,” Regina scoffs, and returns her attention back to the neatly lined shelves and yellow flashing sales tags, but Emma can sense the slowed-down pace, her steps adjusted in time to walk beside her.

On her cheeks, there is a faint blush that Emma pretends not to see.  

When they turn to another aisle, she grabs the first unhealthy thing she can find and drops it in her cart, all just to hear the long, drawn out sigh beside her.

***

They’re nearing the checkout lanes when Emma spots a stand of clear plastic containers with new shiny phones sitting within, blank-faced and inexpensive.

She slows to a stop. Of course, she has no idea what kind of experience Regina’s mother has with tracking. But anyone with money can find anyone.

So, casually, Emma unhooks one of the phones and drops it in her basket.

Henry, her bright-eyed buddy, points her out immediately. “What’s that?” he asks.

“It’s a burner phone,” Emma says, casually, subtly glancing to Regina. Regina stands on the other side of her, only vaguely listening as she checks through the ingredients on a can, oblivious to all the little things that can trip you up. But Emma isn’t deterred. She has found a way to help. “They’re cheap, pre-paid cell phones. Hard to track, too...” She says, a little louder. “Which is kinda cool, don't you think?”

Henry just shrugs, uninterested in the complexity of things he doesn’t understand but Emma can see Regina’s hands halt in mid-air, her fingers curling into her palm as she stands there, wavering. Subtly, she glanced to Emma's basket.

“Where did you get that?” She asks, and clears her throat. “I forgot my phone charger, I might need to make a few phone calls.”

Emma’s hand is already reaching back toward the shelf.  “Red or blue?”

Dryly, she says. “Surprise me.”

Grinning, Emma plucks the red one and extends it toward Regina.

Something happens in the seconds before Regina’s fingers take hold of it, a moment of hesitation, a calculation adding up, but by the time Emma glances up she finds Regina staring levelly at her with dark avid eyes.

She takes the phone. “Why would you need one of these, Miss Swan?” She asks coolly.

Emma wavers. She knows what it looks like. She can see in Regina’s eyes that she is thinking about all the illegal under-the-table possibilities of a hard-eyed girl like her in the middle of nowhere; she knows that at least one of them could have been bought by her mother.

“Oh, you know. It's convenient. They’re really cheap,” she laughs and hides the uncertainty of her fingers within the small pockets of her leather jacket, “They're easy to have, easy to get rid of. ”

Regina narrows her eyes, scrutinizing her face for a lie.

But then, just as quickly, she looks away and drops the phone into her basket. “Well I suppose that is just how you would prefer it,” she answers dryly. “Easy and cheap does seem to be your style.”

The words jab and stick. Wavering, Emma struggles to keep her expression the same.

It’s no more painful than what she's heard all her life, being moved from house to house, but suddenly looking at Regina she can see with painful clarity just how easily the threat of her could be dulled and diminished to fit instead the image of a lonely, harmless girl with cheap clothes and a cart full of frozen food.

The words open wounds; they beat against every soft bruise.

“Right,” Emma says and closes up. Hurt floods like cold water in all the open space between them, hardening her. She lifts up her cart and straightens. “Let's just get in line, yeah?” She says and doesn't wait for an answer.

Turning away, she can hear the silence extending between them. It takes a second for the sound of the wheels on Regina’s cart to start up again, quietly trailing after her.

The line isn’t very long; it’s a small town with only a few regulars in each store at a time. When Emma approaches, the cashier smiles at her with the same vague impersonal friendliness that Emma has known all her life. Emma breaths out shortly through her nose and starts unloading.

It is silent as the food is scanned and bagged, the cashier having eventually run out of the mildly cheerful chatter that usually fills the dead air between two strangers.

Emma just stares ahead of her, waiting for the small black cash register screen to blink with the price of everything. But when it does Regina steps in.

“I’ll pay,” she says, and cuts in front of Emma. She holds that credit card between her fingers.

By the tone of her voice and the hesitant way Regina glances at her, Emma knows it is supposed to be an apology. But its presence knocks harshly against her bones, rankling her.

“No thanks,” she gripes. “Believe it or not, I can actually pay for all of this.”

Regina wavers with uncertainty, “I only meant -”

Emma just slides in front of her. She takes out that worn brown leather wallet she keeps tucked in the back of her jean pockets, full of the tips she earned and the money she stole, all set together side by side.

A plastic cover is stitched in the middle where personal pictures should be, but it holds only her driver's license and a few discount cards.

“Miss Swan,” Regina’s voice thins with her exasperation. “It’s a _treat_ . I _want_ to do it.”

“And I said I got it.”

Emma flattens the argument with her palm, sliding out a few crumpled twenties and handing them over to the confused cashier. “This should cover hers too.”

The woman gives her a wary look before she starts plucking at the keyboard.

Henry stares at them from his mother's side, his eyes dark and watchful like the eyes of some animal burrowed beneath the earth.

“You could have at least let me pay my side of everything,” Regina huffs quietly. Her fingers curl uneasily around her hips as she looks out across the room with thin hard lines around her mouth. “And you shouldn't be carrying that much cash around with you, dear. It's just dangerous- especially if you're just going to be flashing it around so carelessly.”

Rolling her eyes, Emma answers, “I’m not really worried about thieves.” By now she is comfortable with just rewinding and starting again.

But Regina doesn’t know that, so she just purses her lips and stares grimly at all the people standing behind them, watching them as if one might suddenly lunge out for her.

And really, even if one of them did, Emma could just redo it. Step out of line, go to a different store, hide her money more cautiously.

But it makes her think of those failed fights, all those scrambled, panicked moments she erased but still remembers, the ones where her kick doesn't place in the right spot or she is too slow on her feet; those moments that lead to broken bones and bruised knuckles and a spot inside her chest that feels might forever bleed.

Her chest knots painfully; Regina is in the middle of her own escape, but without any of the back doors that Emma has known all of her life; for Regina, escaping means leaving it all behind, driving out to some far away place that her mother might not be able to find.

Emma doesn’t want to think of the consequences if she does not succeed.

“Hey, you know...” Emma starts mildly, determinedly watching the cashier count out her cash instead of Regina’s face. “Maybe you should consider carrying a little more cash around. Instead of a credit card...”

Regina just hums disinterestedly, still irritated. “I'm not really interested in putting my life savings into something that can so easily be crumbled up or stolen.”

There is nothing subtle to say. All her words are too reckless, too revealing. But she needs to convince her.

“Just consider it,” she says and grabs one of the loose plastic bags. “I mean, just think, everything you buy shows up somewhere, shows all the places you go, everything you do...kind of hard to stay off the grid...for your road trip.”

God, it's completely unsubtle. But when she glances to Regina, she can see all the small facial muscles in her face go slack. The color in her completely drains.

Henry grabs a bag and Regina thoughtlessly follows, helping them all get out from the store, but her face is still rippled like the choppy surface of the sea, fraught with worry. She looks like someone who has finally come up for air only to find herself tired and breathless in the middle of an ocean.

“You want to go to the park now?” Emma asks. She wants to somehow make the words mean more than they do. She wants them to promise more.

But they do their job well enough, because when Henry beams up at his mom, Regina seems to catch herself on his smile and gather herself together again.

“Yes, let’s go,” she sighs softly.

“Okay,” Emma says.

She has nothing more comforting to say so she grabs all the bags from Regina’s hands instead. For once, Regina doesn’t fight her. She lets everything go to Emma to turn instead to Henry, lifting him up into her arms. She holds him the whole way to the park.

***

The park is kind of a sorry sight. It’s one of the older parks still made of wood and nails and so the whole thing is tilted slightly and has a vague smell of rain and metal. The steps creak and wobble beneath Henry’s feet as he clambers up to the slide.

“Darling, please be careful.” Regina calls again and watches him cautiously from the ground. Her arms are tucked sternly across her chest, but Emma can see her fingers twitching, resisting the urge to hold her hands out like a steady net beneath Henry’s quick, lithe body. To prevent all possible harm.

Emma watches the dark scraps of hair blow across her face and her fingers absently brush them away again, her attention focused completely on Henry.

As it always is. She watches him so sharply, so attentively, that Emma lets herself believe she can look on without being noticed. She can stare in awe at a mother who loves her child.

But when Henry sits himself down squarely on the playground construction, Regina turns to her abruptly, her attention narrowed curiously on her.

“Why are you watching me?” She asks levelly, as if it were only an interesting observation and not one of the strange off putting aspects of her character that separates her from everyone else, keeps her at an odd distance.

Caught off guard, Emma coughs out a laugh, “What?”

“Well, I've caught you staring quite a few times now.” Regina responds, and then faintly, with a smile, she says. “Are we at least interesting to watch? I don't recall ever developing any bizarre habits, but you're welcome to enlighten me, dear.”

“Uh,” Emma’s lungs tighten with a forced laugh. “No, you don't. Sorry - I didn't mean to just stare at you like that.”

Regina arches a dark skeptical eyebrow at her. “So you're saying it's just my imagination, then?”

Emma swallows, faced incontrovertibly with a question that seems both dangerous to deny or admit. She can only shrug helplessly.

After a few beats Regina hums and returns her gaze to Henry again.

“Fine, then.” she says and Emma shivers faintly from the finality in it.

There is a moment of silence. It sits between them, unmoving even as Henry thwacks a stick against one of the wooden bars and surprises a flock of birds, a loud, silly laugh bursting out of him; the sound might have normally softened his mother's mouth, but instead she just watches him play with an expression Emma cannot read.

The air stagnates between them.

“It's just the way you are with him,” she finds herself saying, the words rushing out from some aching place in her chest. “You're so good to him. I've never met a mother who actually listens to her child - and the way you hold him - I don't know, I just can't look away.”

Regina blinks at her with an abrupt, unguarded expression, so shockingly clear of all reservations that as Emma stares she feels suddenly as though she has looked into a well and seen a flash of its bottom through deep, obscure water.

Regina stares back for only a moment longer before the sound of Henry’s voice brings them back. They both jolt, turning back to where they stand in the middle of nowhere, in a cold park, watching a small child try to climb up the opposite side of a large slippery slide.

“Henry, come on.” Regina sighs and steps forward. “You're going to fall.”

“I got it Momma,” he calls, but almost immediately slides.

His fingers scrabble helplessly along the yellow plastic edges and the wet, red leaves plastered on it as his body falls halfway down the slide.

By the time he finally finds enough leverage to keep himself still, his mother is already at the slide, easily lifting him up into her arms. He whines and Regina gently hushes him, pressing her mouth softly against the top of his forehead as she settles him against her hip, making soft, soothing sounds.

But still, by the time Regina walks back to Emma, Henry’s face is starting to take on that pinched anger that comes and goes in terrifying spasms with young children.

“I think somebody might need a nap,” Regina coos tenderly as she lifts a grumpy Henry higher on her hip. Henry just huffs, tired and teary eyed.

“Oh come on, dear. A nap isn’t so bad is it?”

“No,” he grouches tiredly. “I hate them.”

“Oh, you do?” Regina humors gently.

“Yes,” he frowns, but his eyes are filling with tears. “I am not _sleepy_.”

Over the top of his head, Emma catches an expression so warm and tender on Regina’s face that it reverberates inside her chest like a slammed door, her vision blurring briefly with the faces of other mothers she has known; the mothers whose love grew thin, who gradually turned away, whose love was exasperated by the odd quirks and stubbornness of a child.

But Henry. Henry will never know that moment. When love just stops.

Something warm and weightless floods her chest; this child she couldn’t keep - the one she couldn’t even hold -  found something she never could.

When she looks up again, Regina is watching her with a soft, muted expression that makes Emma’s heart quicken.

“Sorry -What?” She asks, dry-mouthed.

Regina purses her lips and stares at her. It only lasts a moment longer before she lets out her breath and straightens again, seemingly decided.

“We are going to the hotel,” she says. “Henry, is awfully tired and I need to start making dinner.”

Emma can only nod. Her throat closes with a bundling of things she wants to say, half of them warnings and others just hopes that they keep safe. But instead she just stays silent, unable to fit even a goodbye through the tightness of her throat.

“And I will need help with my groceries,” Regina says softly and glances briefly to where their plastic bags sit solidly on a park benchy, flapping a little in the wind, before finding Emm again, “Would  you mind?”

Blinking, relieved and grateful, Emma just nods.

The walk feels shorter than ever even with heavy bags in her hands and a quick, nervous heart. When they approach the motel, Regina stops by the large black gate and Emma stops with her.

There is a single moment of hesitation, Regina holding Henry a little higher on her hip as she glances back at the stairs.

After a breath, “Would you like to come up?” she asks.

Emma reels, blinking. “Really?”

“If you’re willing to carry all those bags up for me,” Regina tilts her head up to the stairs behind her with a dry smile.

Something big thuds against Emma’s ribs.

“Okay,” she says, softly.

Regina smiles, already pushing open the gate to walk up the stairs. Emma stares after her, momentarily absorbed in Regina - in her sharp, narrow shoulders, her back and her legs, those tall heels that might have been dangerous to wear on a wet, slippery day like this, but Regina walks up as steadily as someone without a heavy six year old on her hip.

The room is still the same as it had been when Emma broke into it - bright and shabby. It has two suitcases, pressed against the wall now and only one bed.

There is a slight bend to the room where an oven and a small refrigerator is tucked away in a small white kitchen. One of the windows has a crack in it, hidden mostly by the seashell-colored curtains that droop like one of the plastic bags in Emma’s hands.

“Nice place,” Emma tries.

“Don't bother, I know how it looks,” Regina answers dryly as she settles Henry down on the bed. “But it’s either that or -” She lets herself drift off and Emma doesn’t ask her to continue.

Henry is fast asleep before Regina can even straighten out his legs, his head rolling sleepily to the side. Regina is quick and practiced in the rest of her routine, loosening his shoelaces and working his shoes off the heels of his feet.

“You can settle in dear,” she assures absently, focused on emptying out all the small rocks and seashells that her child must have sneakily hid in his pocket. “I’ll be quick. He’s like a rock when he is tired like this.”

Emma nods but ends up just standing there, watching. She can’t look away. The tenderness in Regina pulls at her like a fisherman’s hook caught in her heart.

The bed is too small, but Emma knows Regina must find some way to fit.

She can imagine it almost perfectly; Regina will curl around her child after all the lullabies are sung, after her child’s eyes fall shut, leaning all her weight on her elbows and hips so that the bed doesn’t shake when she scoots closer. So that she may fall asleep to the quiet hush of her child’s breathing.

Watching them, Emma's chest throbs with absence, feeling the whole messy knot of her life catch in her throat: all of her dead ends and short cuts, all of her sad lonely nights, when even a good memory seems impossible to remember.

Turning silently towards the kitchen, she gives herself over to motion instead. She unpacks all the plastic bags and puts the food away, turning her back from the soft bend of Regina’s back and the loose foot that still hangs off the side of the bed.

She tries to focus on anything - the white marble counters, the red shutters, the stacked terra cotta pots sitting on the shelf outside - anything but the soft sound of Regina putting Henry to bed, those small kid shoes and socks being dropped on the carpet, followed closely by the rustle of bed sheets as they are pulled up and smoothed down again.

Everything she has ever wanted all just a room away. Untouchable.

And what right would she have to it? They’ve formed it all on their own. All that love and gentleness - she has no place in it now. It wouldn't be fair, it wouldn't be right. They wouldn’t have any room for her.

“Thank you,” Regina says from some place behind her shoulder.

Jumping, Emma whirls around. “What?”

“For unpacking,” she clarifies, walking closer. “I keep letting you do too much.”

“It’s not too much. I just unpacked.”

“And paid for all my groceries,” Regina continues as she walks past her to the wooden cabinets, reaching with the tips of her fingers for the stacked plastic bowls at the top. “And showed us around town, carried all my groceries up here, stayed when I asked. That is a lot coming from a stranger, wouldn't you say?”

Emma just shrugs, unsure of what to say. Regina glances at Emma once or twice as she rolls up the dark sleeves of her shirt and washes her hands, preparing for dinner.

She is waiting for some kind of answer. Some kind of explanation for Emma's off behavior, but all Emma has is a memory that never happened and a chest full of feelings that she can’t explain.

Remaining silent, Emma drops onto her elbows after a small shrug.

Without looking up again, she watches the way Regina’s hands move as she cooks, cutting, collecting, tearing things apart in sharp, precise ways before dropping them all in a warm, hissing pan.

After a beat, Regina quietly clears her throat.

“I’m sorry if that. . .if that came off as ungrateful.” she curtly slides all the mushrooms in the saucepan and flicks back her hair in an uncharacteristically nervous gesture. “I do appreciate what you have done today. The groceries, the tour, the park. . .You didn't have to do any of it, but you did. You've been very helpful to us.”

Emma can feel her cheeks burning, bunching her shoulders just to shrug it off. “Yeah - sure,” she smiles, “No problem.”

Regina, still focused on cutting, adds, “I still can't quite measure out why you've decided to help us.” Her eyes flicker up, “It’s not like I've been all that kind to you.”

“You've been kind enough,” Emma says, vaguely, and then, knowing Regina will only continue searching for some kind of answer out of her, she adds, “You love your kid. _Really_ love him. That's enough reason to help anyone.”

“I can't possibly be the only mother who loves their child.” Regina answers, and though her tone is light, amused, there is something about the way she looks up at Emma after, only a beat later, how her eyes tighten visibly, as though she knows (if not a second too late) that the words will hurt. Like she would take them back if she could.

It is this, somehow, despite the ache, that makes Emma smile. “It seems like that, sometimes,” she answers quietly, barely even audibly before she is rearranging her face and whisking the moment away. “Anyway, I was glad to do it. It gives me the chance to show off.”

Regina only gently nods and continues chopping, but under the soft kitchen lights, her face seems to waver with something warm and tender. But before Emma can even be sure, the moment is gone and Regina is doing her part in sweeping up the moment too, busying herself with cooking again.

When she is finished, Regna piles two plates full of pesto pasta and steamed vegetables and wipes the edges of each plate with a soft blue towel as if she is performing in front of a large audience instead of just Emma; Emma just blinks, a little awed, a little dazed.

When Emma looks up, she finds Regina watching her again as she unties her apron. But she seems a little more abashed this time, quickly looking away again with soft red on her cheeks.

Emma asks, “So what about the little guy?” Just for something to say.

“Oh,” Regina hefts out a breath, “He’s too tired. He’ll be a monster if we try to wake him up now,” she answers, and seems to deflate with one rigid sigh, briefly wiping her forehead with the back of her wrist. She closes her eyes. “This trip has been hard for him.”

There is a heaviness to her voice, like an admission of guilt, and already so caught up in her feelings for this family, Emma rushes to ease her.

“These kind of things are hard for everyone,” Emma says, remembering only a beat later that she’s not supposed to know. Flinching, she adds. “Anyway, he's a kid. I’m sure it's just all the long roads that make him tired.”

But of course that's what it is, because what _else_ would make a road trip so hard on a little kid? She's not supposed to know about all the other frantic, lonely parts to this trip.

Pressing her lips together, Emma suppresses a disgruntled sigh when faced with sudden scrutiny from across the counter, the silence ticking by.

At last Regina lets out a long, heavy breath and gracefully, mercifully, lets it go.

“Wine?” she asks instead and Emma nods quickly.

She turns around to uncork the bottle, filling the silence with her quiet, tired movements and the _glug, glug, glug_ of the wine. When she turns around she jerks her head toward the door and Emma just follows after her, carrying their two plates in her hands.

Regina leads her to two metal chairs that are tucked into the far distant corner of the balcony. Sitting down, Emma can see the small, quiet town beneath the wooden planks of the deck and the rows of rigid houses and porch lights that glow against the darkening sky.

Regina hands her a glass of wine and Emma, fumbling slightly, adds, “Thanks. For inviting me. It all looks great.”

“Of course,” Regina hums softly. “It’s just pasta, but. Well, I hope you enjoy.”

There is something soft and genuine about the sound of Regina’s voice and it carries them into a minute of silence, Emma eating with trained smaller bites than she would like and Regina sitting there, seemingly disinclined to say anything at all.

Although Emma can go through the majority of her day without saying a word, there is still that tick of passing time that makes her want to scramble for whatever she can get, so after a few minutes Emma takes a quick drink of wine and clears her throat.

“So um, where you planning to go after the car is fixed?” She asks.

Mainly, she wants to determine whether they have a plan.

But she also wants to imagine them somewhere. After all of this, when they are gone and the car is fixed, she wants to imagine them somewhere safe. Someplace happy and warm.

In the dark, Emma watches Regina’s expression ripple tiredly.

“Oh,” Regina breathes and tilts her head back. “I don’t know. I kind of figured it would become more clear once we were in the middle of it. But, well.” Her voice is lost in another ragged sigh.

A small knot tightens in Emma’s throat, turning her answer into just a shaky, mute nod. She’d like to say that the road really does start to feel like home. That you don’t ever think about turning back. She would like say it gets easier. But it doesn’t. It really doesn’t.

Tucking a strand of black hair behind her ear, Regina seems to consider taking another sip of wine before something stops her altogether and she is shakily breathing out another breath of air and turning to Emma again.

“Do you-” she starts. “Do you have any suggestions?”

“Me?” Emma asks, surprised.

“Yes,” Regina answers, and provides not even the slightest hint that the matter could be scoffed at. She stares at her seriously, wanting a solid answer.

“Well - I mean - it’s a road trip. . .” Emma starts, but can’t seem to complete the lie. To say: go wherever you want, it doesn’t matter, any place would be safe. She drifts off instead.

Regina slowly nods, staring plainly at the soft pink pad of her thumb as she draws idle circles across her wine glass. Her face is unreadable, solid and clear like a frozen lake, until suddenly, it isn’t anymore and her eyes are wet and large, and she is turning to her again with creases around her mouth and an urging, beseeching look.

“But you - you know about these things,” she says, tightening the grip of her wineglass. The glass ticks beneath her fingernails.  “I mean - you must. With the car ride snacks, the burner phone, the credit card - you must know what this is - you know what this looks like.”

Emma freezes, her shoulders locking up. But after a moment, the tension leaves and she breathes out all at once, because of course Regina noticed. Of course she knows.

“Yes I do,” she says.

And though Regina had to have already known, her face still flutters with the surprise of being told suddenly that she is not alone. That it’s not just her that sees this road trip as what it is: a scrambling, frantic fight to escape.

“How?” She asks, voice raw and bare.

Emma considers telling a more elaborate lie. She has by now become good at lying. But something about Regina’s face, the raw honesty in it, deflates the urge.

“I know what a runaway looks like,” she says simply. It is one of the safer routes to the truth, and yet it still feels like opening a hole in her jacket to the soft place between her ribs - to the place that remembers every single thing she has left behind. The rooms, the houses and streets, the places that never turned into home.

“I see,” Regina says quietly and doesn’t say anything else for a while.

The sky is a dark purple by the time Emma sets down her empty glass. The stars are shining like cold pin pricks above them.

She had meant to stand up. To offer excuses and reasons why she should leave. But instead, when she looks over to Regina, she feels something inside of her tremble and well.

“You should go to the beach.” Softer from the wine, the thought of Regina and Henry living anonymously, separately from herself does not immediately catch in her throat.

Regina glances over at her with a furrowed brow, smiling a beat later. “That’s your official opinion as my runaway-guide? Go to the beach?”

“No,” Emma laughs, but can't quite muster up a smile this time. She has always wanted to have some kind of landing spot, some definite place ahead of her that she could work towards, so that when she finally reaches it she would know that that would be it; she would  never have to pack up again. “I don't really recommend stopping for a while, actually. You'll probably always have to be careful, too. But eventually, yeah. Go to the beach.”

“Is there a particular reason why?” Regina’s voice is still amused, but drawn carefully now, like an arrow on a bow.

Shrugging, Emma just loftily pulls her fingers through her hair and falls back against the chair. “Doesn't it sound like a nice place to be?” She says, but the nonchalant, absentminded answer just arches Regina’s brow, so she sighs. “I don't know. I can just picture you and Henry there. I think you'd be happy there, that's all.”

There is a moment of silence. Seconds pass, rolling along Regina’s wrist watch and Emma watches the sky turn darker as she waits, listening distractedly to the sound of distant wind chimes and the soft rattle of aluminum blinds against windowpanes.

When she finally looks over again, a strand of dark hair has blown in front of Regina’s face, softening her face, even with her eyes still sharp and narrowed.

She seems to smile only involuntarily, a beat later, her eyes crinkling slowly.

“I can’t seem to place you at all, Miss Swan.” Regina answers eventually, softly. She sighs, “What should I make of a young beautiful girl who troubles herself so deeply with the lives of strangers?”

Emma’s cheeks heat up. “Well, it’s not like I make a habit of it,” she huffs, caught off guard. Her heart clamors loudly inside. Only Regina could make an accusation sound equally like a compliment. “Why think about it at all? I could see how much you wanted to disappear, and wanted to help. There’s really nothing else to it.”  

There is only a brief pause before Regina sighs. “I suppose I should count myself lucky, then,” she says, and though her voice is light, Emma recognizes the faint _click_ in her eyes, some quiet calculation sharpening her expression. “Though I can’t imagine how I gave myself away.”

Emma can almost smile. If Regina ever does learn the truth, somehow, she will be pleased to know that she never made it easy for Emma. Not even for a second.

“Maybe I have magic powers,” Emma jokes.

And though Regina smiles, she sounds somehow completely serious when she says, “Well, I won’t count it out.”

Happiness swells in her chest and though it is getting late and she has work in the morning and probably a hundred other reasons why staying would be a bad idea, when Regina asks if she would like another glass of wine, Emma says yes. She can’t help it.

***

Later, after many more glasses of wine, Emma mumbles an excuse about her early morning shift. It is late, the town now cool and dark in the silence below with every light across the flat land dimmed or turned off.

She has work the next day. That's true.

But her reason for leaving has more to do with how many glasses of wine she has had and just how little space there is between her and Regina now, their fingers accidentally bumping on the same path to their wine glasses again and again, their knees now touching.

It makes Emma’s skin hum, taking on that warm, hazy quality that makes her breathless and needy, makes her want to crawl onto Regina’s lap, press and pull and tug until there is no space, only skin.

So she stands, head rushing with the wine. “Yeah,” she breathes out sharply. “I should really go.”

The sky is dark, but Emma can see the effect of the wine on Regina’s face, her eyes dark and wide as she turns to look up at her in the quiet.

“But you walked here,” Regina nearly rasps. There is a weighted sharpness to her tone as she presses her lips together. “Dear, you can’t possibly walk home now. It’s too dangerous.”

“I've walked in the dark plenty of times,” Emma responded, but the assurance just pulls some rough, indistinct sound of disapproval from the back of Regina’s throat.

‘“I’m not sending you out to walk home alone. Sleep here.”

“I really can’t - I have work in the morning.”

“So set an alarm.”

Emma huffs and remains still, standing stubbornly with her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her leather red jacket. Her skin is still tingling, buzzing, suddenly imagining a night of closed space, sleeping beside Regina, brushing against her, hips to hips, sharing the same small bed.

It all buzzes anxiously around her chest. She opens her mouth with more excuses.

But she is interrupted. “Emma,” Regina sighs, softly. “It is almost morning. Please, just stay. We have room.”

Maybe it is the way Regina says her name. Or maybe it is how her face looks in the dark with just the faint glow of the streetlights below them. Or maybe it is simply because she asked, because of the roomy, weightless way she says _Stay. We have room._

Emma says yes. She can’t help it.

What follows soon after is clumsy.

Regina leads her back inside their dark, shabby hotel room with their empty glasses in one hand and her heels in the other, maneuvering around the small bed that is already too small with two people in it, let alone three.

But Regina doesn’t take it back or offer Emma any of those blameless, apologetic excuses that other mothers have smiled at her once they realized that the home they offered couldn’t possibly fit her. Couldn’t possibly.

Instead, she roots through her small suitcase, the one with all the clothes and pictures (and that gun) and drags out a soft looking t-shirt and shorts.

“My gardening wear,” Regina says, as way of excuse, and hands them out to her. Emma accepts them silently, gratefully, as well as a glass of water Regina fills up for her (she watches her drink the whole thing the way, Emma imagines, she watches Henry to make sure he eats all his vitamins).

By the time Emma is changed, walking silently back to the bed in the dark, Regina has already maneuvered Henry to fit perfectly against her, in such a way that leaves a small space beside them. A space meant for her.

“He kicks,” she warns quietly, and pulls back the sheets beside her.

“That’s okay,” Emma manages, slowly sliding in.

There is a moment of shifting, the mattress creaking softly as they move together, trying to find room for each other.

When they do, Regina sighs and rests her head somewhere close to Emma’s. Close enough for her breath to skim against her cheek when she whispers, “Goodnight.”

In the dark, with the wall against her back and the warmth of Regina and Henry beside her, Emma feels something large and clumsy lift inside her chest. For a while she doesn't sleep, listening instead to the soft, steady sounds of the two people sleeping beside her.

Henry is silent and still except for the occasional shift of his foot, edging his cold toes against Emma’s lower ribs. Regina sleeps much the same - silent and still, but subject to sudden ticks of movement like Henry, her hand curling thoughtlessly over Emma's wrist as she sleeps.

In the cool dark air, with her eyes closed, Emma lets out a shaky, warm breath and gently curls her thumb over the pink tip of Regina’s finger, wanting only to hold back in some way. To keep this moment captured beneath her thumb.

Before she falls asleep, she thinks, remember this moment. When they are gone, living in some faraway place. Return to it. This is what family would have felt like.

***

In the morning, Emma creeps out into the gray light with her boots and jacket in her hands. She tries her best not to linger too long. If she does, she knows she will start to feel like a ghost crowding the corner of their room, watching a mother and son sleep.

So she leaves, quietly closing the door behind her. As she steps down all the cold metal steps to the stairs, elbows bumping against the narrow railing as she goes, she is almost certain that she will never see them again.

And so it comes to some surprise when Emma steps out with menus and plates only to see Henry and Regina settling in one of the flat, round tables near the corner. Regina grabs Henry’s coat and folds it over her arm with her own, setting it down neatly in the seat across from her as she scoots in beside her son.

Emma stumbles, swaying to a stiff stop.

Regina looks up at her almost immediately as if hearing the soft stunned silence she created, and as she smooths out the wrinkled pink collar of her son’s shirt, she seems to take Emma in, from her soft, rumpled, coffee-stained apron to her messy blonde hair.

When Regina smiles, Emma breathes again and immediately steps closer, pulled in effortlessly the way fast-paced rivers grab and pull people into their undertow, dragging them eventually, inevitably to the bottom.

And though she knows this pull (and knows it's bottom too, knows _exactly_ how dangerous it is to fall for a family who will leave), Emma grabs a pot of coffee and walks over to them, smiling.

***

A routine forms. It’s hard for one not too.

There is breakfast and coffee every morning, always at a small booth in the back while Emma works, circling tables quickly in order to make her way back to them.

There is familiarity, brief closed-mouth smiles over the rims of coffee cups, quick hugs around the waist from Henry, and warm murmured good mornings from them both. There are two more dinner invites and a cold bright day spent at the lake, shivering at the water’s edge in coats and jackets.

Emma never forgets about the car in the shop.

She counts the days silently, smiling over each invite, every soft touch (affection, it seems, is not only offered generously, but inevitably with Regina, given out unthinkingly amongst her other movements, wiping food off Emma’s cheek just the same as she wipes it off Henry's), and every fumbled, affectionate insult that is tossed between them; moments she will be able to relive but never more than just as moments.

She tells herself she’s okay with it. She doesn’t need more. She’s happy with just the moments.

But on the fourth day, while Emma idles in the back of the storage room, counting out napkins and hiding her tired yawns, Regina packs all of her and Henry’s belongings into her car, buckles Henry into his seat and drives away.

Emma doesn’t realize this until after her shift when her boss, busily sweeping up all the spilled sugar on the counter with a fleshy palm, mentions to her as an absentminded afterthought that a woman had come to see her.

He doesn't say anything more, not who she was or whether she had come to say goodbye, but still the words make Emma come to a flat, sudden stop.

“Huh,” she says and then, after a shaky breath, feels her chest shutter and release like an ancient colliery - everything stopping,  faltering, closing shut.

In one rushed, ragged movement, she unties her apron and throws it into the hamper before running out of the diner into the street.

She doesn’t stop for cars or flashing no-walk signs. She keeps running, as fast a she can, toward the red-tiled roofs and the dusty, sand colored motel that she had been asked back to (for two more dinner invites), that had held a family she had stupidly, knowingly begun to love.

By the time she is at the motel, she already knows the room is empty.

The blinds on the narrow windows are pulled down, the door shut, and though they always are, there is an emptiness to the air that makes Emma’s feet like lead on all the steps she climbs to knock on the door.

Nobody answers, not to the first knock or the second, and when she picks the lock, nobody answers to that either. She opens the door to a perfectly empty room.

Feeling a sudden lightness, Emma falls heavily against the doorframe and stares out at the neatly made beds, the empty desk, and cleared counters, the floor now completely bare of any sign that Regina and Henry had stayed there at all.

But they had. They had spent four days in this small space, eating at the diner, sleeping side-by-side, inviting Emma for dinners, trips, for one more glass of wine...

She had expected this. She’d been _prepared_ for it. And yet, faced with it suddenly - the empty room and all the future mornings she will have to go through now with both Henry and Regina gone - Emma can only close her eyes and let the air around her shift, folding in the corners of the room and opening them up again into the small dark storage room she stood in only an hour ago.

Climbing up through the stairs, her lungs still heavy with her own dread, she stops at the counter beside her boss, managing in a short, breathless voice to ask. “Has anyone asked for me?”

Her boss looks up with a confused frown. Not so much for the question, but for her presence at all, for appearing at his side, unprompted (she hates him like all her foster parents), but after a moment he grunts and nods out towards the window.

Through the glass, Emma can see a retreating figure and stumbles out after her.

“Regina!” She yells, once out of the doors.

Regina comes to a sudden stop, her shoulders drawing up in surprise before she turns towards Emma again. “Emma,” she breaths, her face filling with relief and something else that pinches the corners of her mouth, “I was - I was just about to wait for you, dear.”

Stopping with some space between them, Emma breathes out the remaining pain in her chest, “Yeah,” she smiles and shoves her hands into her leather jacket. “So the car is fixed, I guess?”

Regina’s smile wavers, “Oh, well. Yes.” Her hand absently pushes her hair away as she clears her throat. “Henry and I were going to grab a last breakfast here, but...I felt maybe...it was best to just...” She sighs and helplessly waves her hand to complete what she cannot say.

Emma just nods, and looks Regina over again -- all the details she has become familiar with -- from her heels to the squareness of her jaw, to her dark coat and that blue dress that she knows is sleeveless because she caught it hanging on a thin metal rail above the shower once.

She takes in everything she can - her last real moments.

It is a moment she can’t help but love, despite the fleeting feeling of it all, the dull round sadness that goes on and on inside, because the day is bright and sunny and Regina is standing there with her hands in her coat pockets and her mouth pursed slightly as though the goodbye she is keeping herself from saying is something she would like to put off forever.

But when Regina finally opens her mouth, pulling in a short, shuddery breath, it is not with a goodbye.

What she says, instead, is, “What if you came with us?”

Emma blinks, her head spinning wordlessly for a few seconds.

“Of course, if you don’t want to, that’s fine. I know you have a life here, a job - and who knows what else,” Regina continues anxiously, folding her arms hard across her chest. “I don’t expect you to just drop everything for a few strangers you’ve only just gotten to know, but if you _wanted_ to come with us - if you wanted - ”

“You want me to go with you?” Emma asks breathlessly, almost voiceless.

Regina’s face wavers, but after a beat she just pulls in a short breath and states: “Yes. Yes, I do.” And then, with her voice disappearing halfway down her throat, she asks, “Will you?”

Warmth spills over in her chest, loud and overflowing like a river, closing her words in her throat. After swallowing once, twice, each attempt getting caught, she finally just manages a sharp, jerky nod and a smile.

Regina smiles back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for everyone who has read and reviewed!


	3. sprinkles nowhere with me and you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you will note the addition to the chapters in this story; i was writing this chapter, and it kept going to new places that i felt were necessary but not planned, so here you've got one more chapter on your hands. there is a lot of talking in this chapter, i felt like emma and regina needed to stumble a little bit before they reached the fun road trip feel.
> 
> thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed, it means so much to me <3
> 
> also, in addition, thank you to possibilityofmagic for making a cover for this fic. y'all should check out all her work, it's BEAUTIFUL.

 

"Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging at your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do—the only thing—is run."

\-- Lauren Oliver, _Delrium_

* * *

 

 

“This is it?” Regina asks, surprised. She is looking down at the thin cardboard box in Emma’s hands -- limp and slightly damp from it’s time in the back of Emma’s car -- and then out across the bare, empty apartment behind her. “You must have more than just a box.”

Emma glances behind her to the small empty apartment and shrugs. “No, not really.” In her arms are all the things that belong to her: her baby blanket, her red jacket, a rolled up ball of cash, some clothes, and a few other stolen reminders. Everything else is just space and a whole lot of memories not worth remembering.

When she looks back Regina is looking doubtfully at the bare floor and white walls as if she can’t imagine a life that-- if it suddenly needed to be packed up -- could easily be fit into a box no larger than the space between your ribs.

When the silence continues, Emma clears her throat and tries to keep the urgency out of her voice when she asks, “So your car would be...?”

“Right,” Regina seems to restart, straightening up again. “Of course. I parked it right outside, dear. Follow me.”

Outside, Emma spots Henry waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs. He looks up with a smile that makes his cheeks look round and red, his so face happy that just seeing it makes Emma clutch her box a little tighter, just to press back against that feeling in her chest. That _happiness_.

Because -- God, she's gone back hundreds of times before: to foster homes who she liked, to the homes she had been forced to leave, to the people she trusted but left anyway. But never _once_ did they ask her to stay.

“Over here,” Regina calls as she steps down the stairs. In one single movement, she sweeps Henry up into her arms as they walk out towards the shiny black Mercedes, his laughter following them.

It takes a few minutes for everything to settle: for Regina to fit Emma’s box  of belongings in the trunk, pushing and wedging everything around until it can be slammed closed again, for Henry to be buckled into his car seat, for Emma to start breathing normally again...

But when Regina finally settles into the driver’s seat, she smiles at Emma with a frazzled kind of happiness that sets the moment in place. Makes it solid (because sometimes moments only feel like memories until they’re gone).

But _this_ moment -- the car window rolling down, the sound of Henry stirring in the back, the soft radio talk that filling the air as the car starts, the way the tires sound as they roll over gravel -- this is happening. They’re all going somewhere together.

There is Regina handing her a folded map and questioning every bit of direction offered (Are you sure I don’t turn in here? and, Wasn’t that the exit?) and Emma assuring, again and again (No, the next one); there is Regina’s distracted attention, moving from the road to Henry’s sleepy questions in the back (Where are we going next? When are we going home?) and always, the hesitation that follows, Regina glancing tentatively to Emma.

Gradually, slowly, the buildings and businesses disappear and the road flattens into just the long miles ahead of them. Then it’s just them.

The radio is still playing, old men’s voices drifting in and out through the static, but after a few miles with only the empty rolling countryside passing by them, Emma starts to waver in the silence.

She’s traveled a lot in her life and for so many different reasons, but none of them were quite like this. Glancing at Regina, she tries to assure herself that this won’t end like all the other roads do: with her alone, picking herself up again.

Regina notices her stare after a moment. She does so without turning her head or moving her eyes off the road, but Emma is hardly surprised by that anymore.

“What is it, dear?” She asks. With a faint smile, she adds. “You're not regretting joining me already, are you?”

Her tone is light and warm, but Emma recognizes the idle twitch of her hands, the bend of her fingers raised slightly around the steering wheel as her nails tap lightly. Something unknots in her chest with the knowledge that it’s not just her; that she’s not the only one braced to lose something.

“No,” Emma sighs, relieved. She relaxes back into her seat. “Not at all. I’m glad to be here. I’m glad you asked.”

A soft pink rises up into Regina’s cheeks. “Oh. Well. Of course.” She clears her throat and taps her clear fingernails a little more insistently along the steering wheel. “I am too.” And than, in one breath, she crowds in, “And anyway Henry would never let me leave without at least asking.”

Emma nods through the faint buzzing of her body -- the faint trace of a lie. She knows it is: Henry likely buckled his seatbelt and let the town pass silently just as Regina did an hour ago in another memory. But so often, given a second chance, people who leave only choose to leave again. And again and again and again.

So when Regina glances back, her eyes still vaguely guilty for something she didn’t do, Emma just smiles back; smiles from the happiness of the moment, from the sun warming her seat, from hearing Henry’s sleepy murmurs from the back, and from the tentative, surprised way Regina smiles back.

Regina clears her throat and glances back to the road. “So,” she starts, “I was thinking we drive a few hours and see where it takes us, whether that’s a good place to stop. And then maybe we can map out a larger plan.” she turns to Emma again, “Sound good?”

Emma’s cheeks ache a little from her smile. “Yeah,” she says, “Yeah, that sounds great,” (because for once, for once in her life, she is a part of a larger plan).

“Good.” Regina smiles.  

***

It’s only an hour later when Henry starts wiggling, squirming in his car seat. “I gotta go pee!” he cries again.

“I know dear.” Regina sighs. Emma is half-dozing against the car window, but from sleep-heavy eyes she can see Regina’s hand distractedly to the folded up map resting in Emma’s lap before she seems to realize where her hand is going and quickly turns her fingers back to the steering wheel. She asks instead. “Where is the exit, dear?”

“The next one.” Emma says, yawning.

The sun warms the glass on her cheek, making her eyes heavy, her vision blurring with the green and the blue outside. Beneath her feet, she feels the car speeding up, the smooth, dry road turning into the ramp for the exit.

Before she knows it there is the sound of other cars and the stop-and-go bustle of another town outside her window. The car slows, and finally stops.

Car doors open, cool air rushing in. The warm sunlight outside gently presses against Emma’s eyelids.

Softly, she hears Regina whisper, “Hush, dear. She’s sleeping.” There is the sound of seat belts being unbuckled.

Tired and groggy, but knowing she is about to be left behind, Emma stiffly lifts up. “No,” she mumbles and pulls at her seat belt, “It’s fine -- I’m awake.”

Through the blur in her vision, she sees Regina’s forehead fold again. “We’ll only be a minute, dear.” she says.

But Emma is already searching blindly for her seatbelt, pressing, jabbing all around the release button until finally she feels the soft click and the give of the tension in her chest.

Breathing in, she steps out into the bright, cool day and blinks back the fogginess in her head. The sun glints across the roof of the car and against the sunglasses perched on top of Regina’s head as she stands up, holding Henry to her hip.

Regina stares at her for a moment, her expression smooth with that quiet, calculating look, always adjusting and readjusting. But it only lasts a moment before it is gone and she is pushing the door closed again and walking over.

“Ready?” She asks, and Emma follows.

It is quiet between them. The store doors open with a sudden whoosh, ringing a bell softly. The man behind the counter blinks tiredly at them.

As Regina maneuvers towards the back of the room, Emma watches Henry shift in his mother’s arms, leaning over to whisper behind a small palm into his mother’s ear, making her slow.

Emma slows, too, watching Regina’s back. When Regina stops completely, glancing back at her, her heart jumps inside like the pulse of a gun.

“He wants you to take him.” Regina says.

Turning shy, Emma’s fingers tuck anxiously into her pockets as she tries to clear the dryness from her throat.

“Oh. Um. I don’t know about that, buddy. I think your mom probably wants to, uh...” she glances quickly at Regina, “Do that kind of stuff with you.”

To her surprise, Regina just dryly rolls her eyes. “Oh, it’s alright, dear.” She says, brushing her fingers through Henry’s dark hair. “If he wants you to take him, I won’t fight you for it. I’ll just fill the tank with gas.”

“Oh,” she says, and goes blank. She can’t think with those eyes looking at her, those eyes that she has watched disappear a thousand times behind hospital doors, into another room, into a life without her because her hands were too heavy and her heart too bruised, too battered. Because love gives you nothing.

“Right,” she says, “Sure. I’ll take him.”

When Regina passes Henry over to her, Emma holds her breath. Her whole body seems to register the weight of Henry in her arms: the feeling of his knee knocking against her ribs, his bony back against her arm, his small warm hands passing along her shoulders.

It all happens in a moment -- those red, edgy screams ringing in her ears, her hand curling into the blankets, thinking, _yes_ but knowing to say no, watching the doctor nod and turn away again-- so when Emma looks up, she has to blink away the years furring her vision.

“Are you sure?” she asks, voice rough.

A dark eyebrow lifts on Regina’s forehead, but she smiles with tender misunderstanding. “Don’t be so frightened, dear.” she soothes. “The most he will ask you to do is wait outside the door for him. You won’t have to do any of the dirty business.”

“Oh. Um...good.”

Regina just rolls her eyes again, but she is still smiling as she turns, facing the exit sign as she says, “I’ll just be outside, dear.”

Stiffly, Emma watches her leave, standing silently until the doors close shut and then for a moment longer, until Henry begins to squirm again.

“Emma,” he whispers, “I gotta go pee.”

“Right.” she says, and breathes in deeply. “Right.”

***

Emma stands silently in front of the closed bathroom door with folded hands and a gap between her feet like a soldier, only occasionally leaning back to listen to the quiet space on the other side of the door.

After a moment, she asks. “You almost done, buddy?”

There is a small pause and then shuffling sounds. “Almost!” His voice is muffled through the door.

After a moment, there is the sound of running water, a toilet flushing. Emma leans back, looking at the ceiling as she tries to remember the usual routine her foster parents did when it came to bathroom trips, tumbling through years of blank spaces and silences before she remembers.

“Hey, wash your hands, kid.” Emma calls out.

There is a small pause before Henry sighs and shuffles away again.

Smiling, Emma waits. At the store’s entrance, the doors open again as a loud, boisterous family trails inside, all carrying suitcases. Their voices fill the space, all busy laughing, arguing, talking with one another, and Emma tries to ignore the pinched pain in her lungs, the usual stiffness. Clearing her throat, she turns to face the closed door, instead.

“You okay in there?

The door pushes open a moment later, his face pushed through the small crack in the door.

“I need your help.” he whispers. Emma frowns and leans down to hear him better. He raises his voice into a scratchy whisper against her ear.   _“I need your help.”_

“Oh.”

Henry just disappears back into the bathroom and Emma sighs, a pink embarrassment crowding the back of her neck. She glances quickly around her and at the quiet store behind her. But nobody is watching, so she steps inside.

Closing the door, she asks. “Alright so what’s up?” And almost immediately sees the issue.

Henry is a small kid, thin and knobby like she was. Where he stands, the sink is only at his head -- he could lift himself up, rest against the porcelain and use his elbows to keep him steady, but his world isn't as small as her own, he will never have to rely on just himself.

Emma tries for a smile. “So, uh...you want me to lift you up, or something?”

Henry shrugs, “That's what my Mom does.”

Emma’s head feels loose on her neck like a bobblehead as she nods again. “Right. Right well let's go that than.”

Trying her best to follow his mom's example, Emma shuffles up behind Henry and slowly, awkwardly kneels beside him. She hesitates again, suddenly unsure on how to hold a kid, but then Henry reaches for her arms and wraps them firmly around his thin, bony waist.

Once he feels settled there, in her arms, she asks. “Ready?”

“Yeah,” he answers and is immediately lifted into the air, laughing. His bony back presses against Emma’s chest as his feet kick accidentally into her shins, but she holds on, until there is the sound of water and Henry counting the seconds beneath his breath. Emma listens, waiting until those hands go searching for the brown paper towels above him.

When everything is done, he cheerfully announces so, waiting for her to carefully, slowly, set him down again.

“Alright,” Emma breathes out heavily and straightens up again, a little red. “That's over. You ready to go, then?”

Henry nods. Maybe he senses her uncertainty, her embarrassment over small motherly things, because when they turn to go, his hand slides up into her own.

“Come on,” he says. The contact makes her heart jump like a skittish horse, but slowly, her hand feels less unsure and she allows her fingers to gently squeeze back as she follows him out the door, past the noisy, laughing family, and out into the parking lot.

The sky is spread out wide and blue and empty above them. Emma looks quickly across the parking lot, squinting at all the different cars sitting in the parking lot. But Regina’s black Mercedes isn’t there.

She comes to a stop, uncertainty making her neck stiff. “Did your  mom say where she was going, buddy?”

Henry just shrugs. He doesn’t look worried at all (kids like him never are).

His hand is warm and reassuring in her own so she gently squeezes back and tries to slow the weary, ridiculous thoughts in her head.

Because _of course_ Regina would never leave her kid. Of course she wouldn’t.

Of course...

But still, when she hears the sound of Regina’s heels, she turns quickly, finding Regina approaching  with two coffees (because of course she was just getting coffee, of course).

“How was he?” Regina asks when she is closer, handing off a cup.

“Good,” Emma replies, but her relief must show in her face or in the shaky hand reaching towards her cup because two dark eyebrows lift up from the top of Regina’s sunglasses in surprise. Clearing her throat, she adds, “Um... thanks for the coffee. I’ll -- uh, pay you back.”

“Forget about it.” Regna answers. Though her face is clear, Emma can feel the scrutiny beneath her sunglasses like a prick from a needle -- quick and firm -- before it is gone and Regina is sweeping them up in conversation again. “I parked over there -- I was hoping we would be able to reach Chicago before dark, do you think that’s possible?”

“Yeah,” Emma answers. Henry’s hand is still warm in hers. “Yeah, I think we can.”

“Good.” she answers.

It is a quiet walk to the car. With the air so cold, nobody has more than chattering teeth to share.

Emma feels both Henry and Regina shrink closer to her, nearly shoulder to shoulder as they all turn the corner, pushing against the wind.

When they are all settled inside, seatbelts buckled and the car started, Regina turns the heater on and pushes the vent closer towards Emma. The radio crackles, the air filling with soft noise. Henry yawns. Regina quietly asks, “Better?” when Emma sighs and presses her fingers against the heater.

“Yes.” she smiles.

“Good.” She says, and turns the heater up again after just a few minutes.

***

They don’t reach Chicago by dark. They only have an hour or two more on the road, but the sky is black and Regina’s expression has started to take on the sharp, tired alertness that comes from staring at a road for too long, her face occasionally washed by the sharp glare of passing headlights.

“There’s a small motel over here,” Emma suggests, watching the green exit sign approach from the far distance. The road behind it looks dark and endless. Regina only hums and Emma sighs, “Come on. You gotta be tired by now.”

“It’s just another hour.” Regina says, but her fingers are absentmindedly rubbing at a spot on her temple, her face sharp and lined by the quick, flickering glare of headlights. “Anyway, I’d rather not be murdered in some sad looking motel on the side of the road.”

Emma rolls her eyes. “I don’t think you want to fall asleep at the wheel either.” she huffs, and though her attention is on the steadily approaching exit sign, she can hear the shift of Regina’s body against the leather seat, the tension of an argument rising. “I could always just drive.” she suggests.

The argument on Regina’s tongue is punctured by her sharp, incredulous scoff as she turns to glare at Emma, “Oh, not on _my_ watch, dear -- you’ve been yawning almost as much as Henry has, and he is a _child_. His bedtime is when the sun goes down.”

Emma scoffs, but the quiet sound of Henry’s soft snoring behind them reminds her to keep her voice down, “ _You’re_ the one that looks like you’re about to pass out! Let’s just take this exit, than we can reach Chicago tomorrow.”

“A day later,” Regina hisses back, her voice mirroring Emma’s: sharp but quiet. “I said I can keep driving.”

The lines between the passing lanes start getting shorter, chopped, passing quickly.

“Regina,” Emma flattens her hand on the small middle divider between them, fingers nearly touching her elbow.  “I know you want to make up for these last few days. I know you’re stressed about that, but I promise one hour isn’t going to make any difference.”

Regina scoffs and jerks her head a little from Emma’s direction. But she is silent; she is listening.

Emma leans closer. “We covered a lot of distance today. You’re not in danger of your mother right now, the danger is staying on the road when you’re tired like this.”

For a moment there’s only silence. Two cars pass in the time, washing Regina’s face in harsh, flickering light. Then, without another word, Regina flicks on her turn signal and passes two lanes, driving towards the exit.

Emma softly relaxes back into seat, watching the road turn steady and dark, leading them towards the small glowing hotel in the distance.

“We’ll get an early start tomorrow,” Emma assures, smiling.

Regina only nods.

It's darker with only the soft green glow of the dashboard between them, turning them both into soft, gray reflections against the windshield.

Above them, the stars appear and disappear behind a foggy black sky. A moment passes, and then another, and another.

And then, from the dark, Emma hears: “I never told you about my mother.”

The words close around her; closes like a suitcase, zipping her up in the silence, in the dark; she sits, jostling with the movement of the car, unable to speak, packed up already with the heaviness in the air, with Regina’s silence, with the tightness around the mouth, with every sign she has known as a child.

She swallows, her throat tight, suffocating, unable to breathe; her head spins with lies, but the silence is too thick to speak, so she doesn’t say anything at all. She watches the hotel approach, frozen stiff, not seeing anything but the blur of darkness on either side of the car’s windows and Regina’s hands tightening around the steering wheel.

When the car is parked, Emma steps out automatically, feeling Regina’s silence pressing against the back of her head as she moves to pop open the trunk. Regina doesn’t say anything as she lifts a sleeping Henry onto her hip or when she lunges in to wiggle free her suitcase.

Grabbing her own small box of belongings, Emma follows after Regina, her heart quivering like some small, fearful thing inside.

The rest happens quickly. When asked how many rooms, Regina quickly answers “Two,” and doesn’t look at Emma again until she is paying for her own room and reaching for the key. “Until tomorrow, dear.” she answers, and disappears around the corner.

When the hostess turns back to Emma with that cheerful, impersonal smile, she smiles back, swallowing the knot of horror in her throat as she pays for her room.

For a while, she paces restlessly. She paces the entire room until she can’t anymore, until her thoughts, ( _you fucked up, you fucked up)_ are too big to stand beneath.

The room is small and typical. It has one small bed with a cross-patched cover and throw pillows. There is a fake plant on the desk and the smell of dust.

She doesn’t know how long she sits there, waiting; she doesn’t look up from her hands as she waits for some sort of plan to become solid, to find a lie big enough to make this all just a silly misunderstanding, but nothing materializes.

She could go back in time, but to do what? To stay silent, and hope they don’t crash? What made Regina turn off? Feeling assured that her mother wouldn’t catch them, or was it the realization that she was driving with a woman who knew too much of something she shouldn’t know at all?

_You fucked up_

After what feels like hours, someone knocks on her door. It’s a sharp, precise knock, one knows exactly who is standing on the other side of it as she stands robotically. Something weary and tired touches her from the bottoms of her feet to the heavy weight of her shoulders.

Regina has come to cast her off. This is a goodbye.

But she only waits a moment before sighing and walking toward the door again, Regina on the other side. Holding what looks like a bottle of scotch.

“Hey,” The word sticks in Emma’s throat.

Regina is still wearing her slim power suit, her hair wet from a shower and her clothes neatly straightened as though she had ironed and folded them with the intention of putting them away until, suddenly, she decided to dress in them again.

“Would you like a nightcap?” Regina asks.

Swallowing, Emma nods and steps back from the door.

Walking inside, Regina steps out of her shoes and jacket so perfunctorily that Emma remains standing warily at the door, watching her. Regina finds two crystal glasses on the counter and silently fills each glass with scotch.

“Take a glass.” Regina says and extends a hand toward her.

Gently, Emma does; she nearly makes a very bad joke about it being poisoned but retracts it in time, meekly clearing her throat instead.

“Thanks.” she mumbles, and takes a small sip.

Regina only hums and walks towards Emma’s bed, disinclined to say anything, apparently. She sits down at the corner of her bed, her knees folded neatly as she looks to some picture on the wall, away from Emma.

_You fucked up you fuckedupyoufuckedup._

Emma makes her way to where Regina is, but a pulse of insecurity has her edging toward the wicker chair beside the bed, instead.

So many apologies fill her head, merging with the quick, hurried lies that might put her back in Regina’s favor; so that she might not wake up with Regina’s room cleared out and the Mercedes gone.

But nothing seems convincing, so she only remains there sitting in silence, nervously turning her glass in her hands. Regina adds her silence with her own, only occasionally moving to lift her glass to her lips. A silence catches and holds. Emma can hear the sound of rushing water from the rooms above, the faint sound of conversation, everything outside of this moment that carries the time forward.

Emma stares out across her room. It's not the best place she's stayed in (certainly not the best to be left in) but not the worst. The floor is slanted and the air too damp; there is a brown spot on the wall where water has swelled silently for years with failed drain pipes. Out the window there are only other windows and walls to stare at.

If Regina leaves her here, if she disappears, Emma will probably only have to stay one or two more nights until she figures out a car. But - but.

“Regina.” She hears herself say, almost without her full knowledge. She hears the crack in her voice. Regina turns to look at her, but her expression is blank, constricting the tight muscles in Emma’ throat. “Regina...I -- I just want to explain. I think there's -- a bit of a misunderstanding, because what happened earlier, well it’s really not what you think -- it’s not --.”

“Emma,” Regina interrupts swiftly and sets down her glass. “That's enough.”

Heart tripping, battering, Emma scoots up on her chair, at the edge. “No, wait. Please --” Emma hates herself for the tears burning behind her eyes, for the pleading tremor in her voice, the way the word _please_ squeaks . “Honestly, I can _explain_ \-- it’s not -- it’s really not whatever you think it is, it’s just a misunderstanding -- I just --”

“Emma,” Her lungs run out of breath at the stern sound of Regina’s voice, aching as though two angry hands had suddenly fit between her ribs and closed around them. When Regina stands, a high breathless sound comes out of Emma’s throat as she watches her straighten up, fully expecting to see her step into her shoes and walk out of her life forever.

But instead Regina stops abruptly in front of her, holding onto the arms of the chair.

“Emma,” she states clearly, firmly. “Take a deep breath.”

As if by command, her lungs expand and she feels a gentle rush of relief in her chest. Regina’s voice gently aids her (Slowly, dear, breathe, breathe) and Emma obliges, taking one deep breath, and then another, feeling pain in every shuddering breath she takes.

Slowly, though, the pain fades and her breaths start to come out slower. Regina stands there watching her, waiting.

When Emma’s breathing is calm again, Regina just sighs.

“This is what’s going to happen,” Regina’s shoulders straighten as she stares down at Emma, her face sharp and angular in the dim light. Emma just stares back. “You’re going to answer a few of my questions. Either tell me the truth, or nothing at all because I don’t want a lie, Emma. If you’re going to lie to me--”

Regina’s lip curls instinctively and Emma immediately shakes her head.

“I won't, I won't,” she assures even as her head fills with probable lies, trying to fit the truth into one of them.

There is only one version of the truth that Regina would believe. That Henry is the kid she gave up six years ago. She knows about Regina’s mother because she couldn’t let things alone, because she had to get involved, because she couldn’t let another chance at a family go.

It would make Regina run faster from her than even her mother.

Regina looks down at her silently, her eyes dark and her face withdrawn even as she sighs.

“Do you work for my mother?” She asks. Her voice sounds bleak, resigned.

Emma’s voice cracks doing all she can to push all her heart into one word, “ _No_ .” Regina narrows her eyes, and Emma sighs, gesturing helplessly with her hands. “I don’t, I s _wear_. I have no idea who she is, just that you’re running away from her.”

Regina purses her lips and tilts her head away, to a point where Emma can only really see the sharp rise of her cheeks and the hard tight skin around her eyes.

Her voice is tight when she asks. “Do you know why?”

“Not really,” Emma says.

But she remembers the cold, hard terror in Regina’s eyes just as she remembers all the steps she used to climb as a child, how it felt to run with those angry hands right behind her, (those hand that have caught her so many times in her memories, and catches her still sometimes, wakes her up in the middle of the night so many years later).

“It’s about Henry.” Emma breathes, “She’s threatening to take him from you. You’re scared because you think she can.”

Emma can feel the breath Regina takes. “How do you know this?” She asks, her body tense.

 _I gave birth to your son six years ago. I broke into your room once, in a memory that never happened_.

When Emma doesn’t answer, Regina sighs roughly. “So let me get this straight --” she irritably pushes her hair back behind her ears. “You know about my mother, _not_ because you’re working for her, but for some other reason that you don’t want to tell me about and I’m just supposed to _trust_ that you’re harmless, despite the fact that you know too much about things I have never told you?” Her dark eyes find hers, “Is that about right?”

_You fucked up._

Emma looks down at her hands, presses an idle, trembling thumbnail against her palm until the skin whitens and she can think a little clearer.

But still the only thing she can think to say is “ _Yes_ ,” because Regina has stolen all shape of deception for her to hide in.

When she looks up again, Regina is staring at her with a flat, unreadable expression, like the faces of the foster mothers who only performed, whose love retreated to some far, unreachable place, who looked out at her as though from a distance.

Some tiny hard ball tightens in Emma’s chest as she stares at Regina, her voice welling up without even her notice until suddenly, she is speaking, and can’t stop.

“It’s not like --” she breathes out, and has to suck in a big breath just to continue again, “It’s not like I just read your life off of a piece of paper. I didn't go looking for you. I found you. I don’t know anything about your mother except for that, for some reason, she wants to hurt you. For some reason, some mothers do.”

Regina slowly straightens, staring at her. But her expression isn’t angry or sad.  It’s not even blank. It is a face stripped of everything, even surprise.

“The rest of what I know about you...” Emma continues tentatively, speaking softly. “I know because you showed me. I know the kind of coffee you like, how stubborn you are, how caring, or that you drive like a crazy person -- I know all of _that_ because I saw it.” A small watery smile pulls up on Emma’s mouth, even as her throat closes. “Same way I know you’re a good mother.”  

Regina stares at her for a long time, hardly breathing, her arms laying limp at her sides with half formed fists.

Quietly, after a long moment, Regina sighs. “I just...I don’t understand this, Emma.”

“I know.” she whispers.

Regina looks down at her searchingly. She stares and stares as the silence returns the room to its quiet noise, the sound of rushing water, laughter, conversation, the silent, fearful hope: _trust me, trust me, trust me._

Eventually, Regina says. “I have one last question,” Emma looks up with a tilt of her head, blinking in surprise when two warm hands gently fall on to her shoulders, to her red leather jacket. Regina gently squeezes, smiling again. “When did you get this?”

Emma blinks, unable to answer for a moment, but Regina’s face doesn’t change and her arms remain bent softly around Emma, her hands pressing gently against rough worn leather.

“When I was fourteen.” Emma answers quietly. “I -- uh, stole it. I guess.”

Softly, Regina presses her lips together. “You guess?” She asks, and softly smiles, idly smoothing down the red stiff collar along Emma’s neck. “Well, at least you’ve worn it well. I think I have seen you wear this every day I’ve known you.”

“You probably have.” Emma smiles back, timidly. “I like it. It makes me feel safe.”

Regina’s hands tense on her shoulders. Her expression flickers with a soft, painful smile -- the kind that makes a muscle in her cheek tick and the corners of her mouth push down again after only a moment.

She doesn’t say anything more, but with her face still full of that soft shared sadness, she lifts a hand to pull her fingers through Emma’s hair, gently following the curve of Emma’s head all the way to the back of her neck until she can pull lightly at the roots. And repeat.

Dumbly relieved, Emma sighs and falls limp.

When Emma looks up again, there is a soft warm tenderness on Regina’s face. But the moment Emma sees it, Regina clears her throat and let's her hand fall back against her body, stepping away.

“Well,” She slides her hands into her waist pockets. “I suppose I should return to Henry.”

“Okay.” Emma answers. Her head is busy with the soft tingling of her skin. “Um. See you tomorrow.” Despite her intention, her voice still ends like a question.

Regina just nods and passes by her, folding her coat over her arm and stepping back into her shoes. The bottle of scotch remains on the table and Emma doesn’t remind her as she opens the door and steps out.

It’s hardly something to go back for, but if Regina really does leave, leaves her here all alone, she’ll likely need it more.

***

Emma wakes up the next morning still in the chair she was in the night before. She blinks, bleary-eyed and stiff, and sighs. When she stands, she expects her back to fight her.

But it doesn’t. She stands easy, nothing tense or tight, and stretches her arms high above her head, body loose and warm.

Sometimes, sleep still comes easy. Sometimes, it still feels good.

It’s the next part that’s hard for her. A stiffness works its way into her chest, slowing her down as she gets ready -- showering, brushing her teeth, preparing for the moment when she has to knock on room 108 and see if her last shot at family has gone or not.

When there is nothing else to do, Emma finds herself shuffling out into the cooler air, anxiously zipping up her jacket. The morning is soft and rainy, the grey clouds so high in above her that they take no shape in the sky.

Emma turns one corner and then another. She breathes in one large breath, stopping at the door and knocking her knuckles hard against it; the sound seems to echo in the bones of her cold fingers as they fall to her side, flexing and unflexing in the silence.

She waits.

She waits until her chest expands with one big ragged breath and her feet nearly turn her away right there, to go back to her room and to that bottle of scotch. But before she can even step away, the door swings open again.

“Hello, dear.” Regina answers lightly. Her fingers idly fix an earring. “Did you sleep well?”

Emma stares back, her surprise and relief spanning the empty air as she breathes.

“Oh,” she says at last.

Regina tilts her head, but doesn't appear surprised. She only glances down to her red, cracked knuckles and sighs. “Come inside, dear. It's too cold.”

Emma manages to close her mouth and nod, following Regina back into the still-dark room. The only light to help guide their way through is the bathroom light, muted soft behind a door, but Regina still maneuvers effortlessly across a floor filled with children toys and clothes in the dark.

“We should get a move on soon. I only have a few things to clean up in the bathroom,” Regina says to a mirror, quickly reapplying her lipstick. When she looks back at Emma, her teeth gleam with a red smile, “I know you've got nothing to do with it, but will you please help Henry clean up his mess? He’ll rarely do it without help.”

“Yeah,” Emma breathes out heavily, still so relieved. “Yeah, of course.”

Regina presses her lips together, suppressing what might be a smile. “I'll only be a moment.” She murmurs and turns silently to the bathroom, her dark hair and clothes hiding her in the dark until the bathroom door opens again. Emma can do nothing but watch her leave.

But when the door clicks closed, Emma sighs and slowly turns toward the bed where a small body is still curled up onto one side of it. For a moment, there is just the sound of soft breathing.

Approaching quietly, she catches Henry’s eyes peek open before he quickly shuts them again.

With a soft smile, Emma walks to his side. Henry remains completely still in his perfect imitation of sleep, not moving an inch, not even when Emma crouches down beside his bed.

“You awake buddy?”

Nothing.

Biting her lips, Emma lets out a false sigh and plops her elbows down onto the mattress. “Oh man, that's too bad. I thought we’d have time to play a cool new game,” Henry doesn't even falter, like a damn expert. “Oh well. That's probably for the best, it's way too hard for just a little kid.”

Against the mattress, her palms feel the tension in Henry, his little fingers clenching a stubborn line growing in his forehead. But still he remains silent.

“Well,” she sighs, grievously, “I guess I'll just have to play it on my own.”

Quietly, with his eyes still closed Henry sighs, and whispers back. “Is the game just me cleaning up?”

Emma snorts, startlingly loud. She can’t help it. “Sorry sucker,” she laughs, and  in an edgy spasm of love, hooks one arm beneath Henry’s legs and the other behind his back to lift him up again.  

A delighted scream leaves Henry as he squirms wildly in Emma’s arms. It is a game she used to play when she was still in the homes, when she was getting older and all the kids were gradually getting younger, when she could lift up screaming, laughing kids into her arms like one of the mothers on TV that loved their children.

Watching him now, wiggling in her arms, laughing, she feels a brash, hurting love press up against her chest again. It happens so suddenly she nearly comes to a stop. Suddenly, without warning, the memory of the hospital room calls to her again and again, pressing against the back of her eyes.

Stiffening, she forces out a laugh, and sets Henry down again. Clearing her throat, she nods her head to the mess of the living room. “We  -- uh, we should probably make this room really nice for your mom, again. To help her out, you know?” Henry, still smiling, just nods, his happiness untouched by her memory. With a gentle, soft squeeze of his shoulder, she adds. “You know, you're a good kid.” So much more than what he would have been if she had said yes, if her arms were full, if she had left that hospital room as a mother. If she had raised him alone.

Henry rolls his eyes, but reaches for her hand anyway. His fingers are cool and soft in her own, but they hold tight and so she lets him lead her to the mess in the other room.

Emma thinks she hears a door close, but when she looks up, it is still just her and Henry alone together. So, slowly, Emma settles down beside him to help stack legos against legos and put dinosaurs back into their boxes.

A few minutes later, amidst the quiet talking -- Henry telling her the name of every toy that is already packed away, zipped up into his mom’s suitcase -- the door opens again. Regina steps out, sliding a dark button-up coat on her shoulders.

Emma leans up with a smile. “You ready?”

The room is still dark, but the gray morning light falls in bright, watery streams, touching Regina’s face as she approaches, smiling.

“Yes, I believe we are” She stops behind Henry’s back, tenderly touching the top of his dark head. “You two did a really good job cleaning up. Thank you.” Her eyes flash up to Emma with her last word, warming Emma’s chest instantly.

“Are we going, already?” Henry asks, and looks up.

“Yes, sweetheart.” Regina says with a smile, but it falters when Henry just sullenly ducks his head again, and avoids the hesitant touch of her hand, not looking up again. When Regina looks up again, her face is as hard and closed as a door. “You should get your belongings, dear. We will meet you by the car.”

Emma readily stands, but by the time she has crossed the floor, her worry has crept inside again. It creaks like old wooden stairs, loosening the floor beneath her feet.

At the door, Emma swallows and turns back.  “Or -- you know, I can always just grab it when we are all leaving? I didn’t unpack anything, so it’s still just in its box -- It would be quick.”

Regina looks up with irritation. “Emma,” she sighs, and drags a fingernail quickly across her eyebrow with exasperation. “We’re not -- We’re not going to just _leave_ you, alright? Will you please just get your things?”

A hot shame burns in her cheeks. Quickly, she drops her eyes. “Right -- okay.” she mumbles quickly and leaves, shutting the doors close behind her heels..

She doesn’t look up until she has grabbed her belongings and returned the key, until she is walking through the cool shame that weighs against her legs like water to the car in the parking lot with its trunk still open. Regina closes it for her and opens the passenger door for her, too.

“We’ll just drive past Chicago, I think.” Regina says, softly.

Emma just nods.

***

For an hour or so, they travel in silence. There is still the sound of the radio and the back and forth of Regina asking and answering her own questions, but there is a kind of stillness, a separation like the distant, flat earth outside whirling past their window.

Telephone poles flicker by like fence posts. Purple flowers blow back and forth along the long green grass. Emma leans her cheek against her hand and watches it all pass.

She doesn’t notice the stirring in the back, or how often Henry sighs. It is something that can only be picked by a mother, by careful ears trained to hear even the faintest sign of unhappiness in her child.

“What’s the matter, dear?” Emma hears Regina ask, centering her back into this moment.

Turning around, she looks back to find Henry staring determinedly out the window and Regina  waiting, her mouth bracketed with thin, unhappy lines as she turns her eyes repeatedly from the road to the rearview mirror. The lines in her mouth deepen as the stubborn silence persists.

“Henry.” Regina’s voice,  a firm reminder of motherly authority, finally loosens the knot of silence.

Henry lets out a big sigh. “When are we going _home_?”

Emma freezes, glancing quickly to Regina. She sees her stiffen, her face turning cold as if skin could turn to marble. Emma has heard Henry ask that very same question several times in her time with him, but it has always been softened by other questions and more pressing concerns.

Now, the question sits determinedly on Henry’s face, waiting to be answered. It sucks all the air from the car.

“I told you, dear,” Regina answers loftily, but there is a sharp, clipped tone to her voice. She doesn’t look at Henry through the rearview mirror. “We won't be going home for a while.”

“Yeah, I _know_.” Henry huffs. “You keep saying that.”

“Henry.” Regina warns, “I don’t like that tone.”

Henry wavers, torn between obligation and rebuking the answers he has heard before. When it settles, turning his face hard and mulish, Emma she can see almost exactly how she has molded him. Like this, she can see herself in the stubborn jut of his jaw and the curve of his forehead. In all the hard, flat places where his anger sits.

“I hate being here.” Henry snaps, angry in his confusion. “I hate this stupid car and this stupid trip, why can’t we just go _home?_ ”

Regina breathes in a slow, steady breath, but Emma can see the hitch at the end, how the air evaporates from her lungs.

“I told you,” she finally says, “We’re not going home for a while. I don’t know when. I don’t know _why_ you keep asking when I can’t give you a different answer.”

“But I don’t want to go anywhere new.” Henry is quieter now, sadder. It makes the grip of Regina’s fingers tighten and turn white. “I don’t want to be in this car anymore. I just want to go home...”

The silence is raw, startling. It spans carelessly in each breath, filling up the car with every hushed breath.

Eventually, in a pinched voice, Regina states: “We’re not talking about this anymore.”

Henry’s chin rises, his cheeks flushing with red, angry confusion. Emma can see the anger in him rearing up, his face stubborn and his eyes the very same eyes she has seen in the reflective surfaces in all of her childhood homes after an argument with a foster parent finally blows over.

Leaning on an elbow, she looks to Regina to see how an interference might be taken, but Regina doesn’t look at her, her focus bent rigidly on to the road in front of her.

She turns to Henry.

“Hey,” she smiles, gently tapping a finger on his ankle when he doesn’t look up. She waits for his big, wet eyes to look at her again, trying for a smile. “What are you missing so much about home?”

Henry frowns, momentarily forgetting his anger. “I don’t know.” He huffs, and shifts uncomfortably. “I liked my bed. My friends. I miss stuff I left behind.”

Regina makes a quiet noise that comes out muffled against the fingers she has pressed to her mouth. She takes a long breath and doesn’t turn away from the road.

“You wanna know a trick I learned when I was a kid?” Emma suggests. When Henry only looks at her with a vaguely unimpressed look, she laughs. “Okay, I know, it might sound stupid, but it always helped me when I had to go somewhere new, alright?”

“Did you move around a lot?”

“Yeah.” Emma says. Unexpectedly, in her next breath, her chest expands largely as though to fill her lungs with all the space in her life, with all the homes and love that never took hold. It doesn’t quite fit in one breath, or in any of the others she takes. “I was a foster kid. I never really had just one place to be in.”

“Oh.” Henry says. Emma watches him struggle with the idea. “So...you had a lot of homes?”

“Yeah,” A loud brash laugh escapes her as she nods. “You could say that. I had so many, I don’t even remember some of them.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Regina shift, and clear her throat, rolling her shoulders back against the seat until she looks poised again. But there is a tremor in her hands that doesn't quite leave her fingers even when they tighten around the steering wheel. Emma returns to Henry, trying to find her place again. This isn’t time to tell your story, Emma reminds herself. This is about Henry.

“But the point _is_ ,” she emphases softly. “Is sometimes I really _wanted_ to stay at a home. It didn’t happen all the time, but there was sometimes a house that felt different. It felt...nice, and comfortable. And though I would really, _really_ want to stay, I couldn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Something difficult gathers at the back of her throat, all the soft-ragged years and aching absence rushing hot and angry into her chest. She pushes through it. “Because sometimes you just don’t get to. You don’t always know why.”

In the small pause that follows, Emma can hear the squeak of leather as Regina silently shifts in her seat. Restlessness fills the air, pushing tension against the back of Emma’s neck. She can’t bear to look at Regina now.

Swallowing, she focuses on Henry instead. On his frowning mouth and those big, wet eyes.

With a soft, harried smile, she squeezes around his ankle again.

“But when _that_ would happen, when I would have to leave a home I liked, I would try to pick at least one thing to remember it by.” Like the bay windows of her second home, the smell of ginger on her third, the way her first mother used to smile. “That way -- whenever I miss a home, really miss it, I can still think about that one thing and feel good about it again.”

Henry just looks at her. In his eyes, she can see that it is not enough. It is not enough to simply remember. Emma doesn’t know how to explain that that is a part of life, too. That it’s not always about what will be enough, but what will help you survive.

Even for Emma, even with a memory that can open and close like a door, it’s not enough --

She could go back a hundred times to the moments that mean the most -- to the houses she came to love, to the rooms she could fit all her belongings into, the parents she knew by name -- and still have a car door closed in her face.

“Do you have a memory like that?” she asks

Slowly, Henry nods.

She watches him close his eyes, and though he doesn’t disappear and the moment they are in keeps going, uninterrupted, she can see the softness return to Henry’s face, spreading slowly beneath his skin.

“Okay.” He says.

“Okay,” she echoes, smiling again. She squeezes his ankle gently.

When she turns back, Regina is staring at her, her eyes dark and bright. She stares and Emma stares back, unable to look away until more road signs pass and Regina is forced to focus back on to the road.

Slowly, Emma turns back to her own window, to the quickly passing landscape outside, but she can feel those eyes on her again as they drive on, glancing back to her as often as one might check with all the mirrors in their car.

***

They don’t drive as far as they had planned to. There are pencil markings on a town more than three hours away on their map, but Regina doesn’t approach the subject as she silently merges into an exit lane for a small town. Done for the day.  

There is a kind of pleasant stiffness in Emma’s body as she stands, feeling all the silent hours of the car resting within the soft angles of her body -- in the arch of her neck and along her back. Sighing, she steps out and stretches, helping gather up all of their things from the trunk of the car.

Regina asks for two rooms again, and Emma’s (stupidly hopeful) heart falls. She quietly follows Regina up the stairs, watching Henry’s sleepy head rest on his mom’s shoulder as they climb, but when they reach the top, just as as Emma is about to turn a different corner, Regina clears her throat.

Slowing down, Emma glances back to find Regina fiddling with her keys.

“I was going to order in.” Regina says, as way of invitation, and opens the door for her.

Smiling brightly, relieved, Emma steps inside.

Regina orders in pizza and allows them all to eat on the bed, the pizza box sitting on a stack of magazines between them all. Regina sits beside Emma, her bare feet tucked beneath her as she flips through fuzzy television shows that only Henry will watch.

Hours later, when the food is gone and Henry is put to bed, Emma stands up to leave. The dim blue light of the evening helps Emma find her jacket again, but she only manages to put her arms through the sleeves when Regina’s voice calls for her again.

When she looks up, she finds Regina gently shadowed against the door frame. With the kitchen light touching the back of her shoulders, Emma can only see only a dark outline and the light behind her.

“Stay for a glass?” she asks.

“Yeah, of course.”

She follows Regina into the kitchen, watches her reach on her tip-toes for two tumblrs and pour in a dark cider that makes Emma’s chest warm after only two sips.

It settles her against the counter, feeling warm and pleasantly weighted. She sighs and watches Regina drink, sometimes looking elsewhere and sometimes watching her.

It isn’t until Emma’s glass is nearly empty and Regina is busy pouring her another one that the silence breaks.

“Thank you for earlier.” Regina gently clears her throat and sets down the bottle of cider, still close from the act of pouring. “For, what you said. What you did for Henry...”

“Oh,” Emma swallows quietly. “No problem.”

Regina only nods and continues standing there, her fingers loosely holding her glass of cider  to her side as she stares out across the white-tiled kitchen and wooden cabinets. She seems to be deliberating something, but Emma can’t see any direction in her thoughts, any hint to what she might be thinking beyond the glass cabinets and white walls that she stares at.

So Emma waits, tentatively taking sips of her drink.

When Regina asks, it’s against the rim of her glass, the words, “You must think I’m awfully reckless,” fogging with her breath. She takes a long sip.

Emma frowns and leans over a little, to better seek out Regina’s eyes, but Regina doesn’t look at her. She only stares down at the circle of glass in her hand.

“I can’t blame you for thinking so.” she continues, “What else can you possibly think when I have seemingly, completely by whim, asked a stranger to join me on this ridiculous road trip of mine and dragged my young son across the country. From his home.” she directs her voice to the counter, shame pressing her lips tightly together.

Emma breathes out heavily. “I don’t think you’re reckless at all.” She watches Regina look away, unconvinced, and pushes her hand out towards the place where Regina’s hand rests, flat against the counter. “Honestly, I don’t. I think you’re brave for doing this.”

Regina merely hums and swirls the liquor in her glass. At a lost of what she can say, Emma can only stand there silently, waiting for something more meaningful to say, for something clear and concise to lift up in her chest and make all the small, tight lines in Regina’s face smooth out again.

But she has never been one for words, even now, when all she wants is for her heart to speak a little louder, a little more clear.    

Sighing, she rubs absently at an ache in her neck.

Regina looks up at the absent motion. “Do you have a stiff neck?” she asks quietly.

Emma merely shrugs. “Yeah, I guess,” she answers, “It’s just a knot.”

Regina is silent for a moment, deliberating. After a minute, she seems to decide on something.

Setting her glass down, she nods towards the couch, “Go sit down,” At Emma’s surprise, Regina elaborates with a soft sigh. “I am going to give you a massage.”

“Oh.” Emma says, and can't imagine a single other thing to say in all her steps toward the couch, sinking down silently on the old, battered leather. She faces the wall, listening to the sound of Regina moving behind her.

“Take off your jacket." Regina says from a distance. Her voice is moving somewhere else. Emma glances behind her, but the kitchen and living room are empty. Distantly, she can hear the soft sound of Regina’s soft, bare feet, moving somewhere else

Slowly, Emma slides her jacket off her shoulders, her heart beating hard against her ribs as she slowly settles back against the couch. Emma waits, listening silently to Regina’s bare, escaping feet as she moves across the floorboards, the sound of a zipper hissing open and closing again, all the small, quiet steps that gradually brings Regina back.   

The only warning Emma has is the soft creak of a floorboard before Regina’s fingers gently settle against her neck, lifting up her long blonde hair.

“There,” Regina whispers, and presses a tortoise clip against her scalp, keeping her long hair up from her neck. Emma breathes out slowly, feeling cool air blow across her bare skin. “That’ll be easier.” she says.

Emma doesn’t move. She waits tensely for what happens next, feeling her shoulders jerk up when Regina’s hands settle across the soft arc of her neck.

Regina’s hands are warm and gentle. She presses both of her thumbs against the small bump of vertebra in Emma’s neck, slowly rolling over and around the bone, pressing hard with the soft pads of her thumbs.  

Groaning softly, Emma can feel the gentle give in her body, bending her head down to give Regina’s hands better access. There is something so tender about her hands, so caring, even as the circles turn hard and rough along the tight muscles in her neck and shoulders.

For a while, there is only silence. Emma feels herself slowly sagging down into the couch, turning soft and pliable as every tender spot along the bony planes of her shoulders is carefully unwound again. The evening deepens into a black-blue, lighting the windows with distant lights of the houses outside. The highway hums distantly.

After a while, Regina quietly clears her throat, bringing back her attention.

Emma opens her eyes slowly, having not realized she had closed them. Blinking, she squints up at Regina, to bring her back into focus against the dark room. The only thing visible to her is the brown curve of Regina’s cheeks and the outline of her dark, dark hair.

"I think probably I am a little reckless," Emma tilts her head back further to see Regina’s expression more clearly, but Regina isn't looking at her. She seems to be talking to someone else in the room, to some place on the wall. "If it's true, I don't think I mind very much. My life hasn't felt like mine for nearly twenty eight years, despite fighting for every second of it. It's belonged to just about every one else, and it took nearly dissembling the entire thing just to get a small grip of my own.”

She takes a small, shaky breath. "For that reason, I don't normally let people very close to me," A wry amusement pulls at the corner of her mouth as she idly curls one of the stray wispy curls close to Emma's neck around her finger. "Granted, there haven't been all that many, but I'd still have sent them in circles if they tried."

In the silence, Emma watches the quiet, inner working of Regina's throat as she swallows. A quiet nervousness pulls the brow between Regina's eyes. 

"But..." Regina gently continues needling Emma's shoulders, just for the distraction. "I don't feel that with you," When Emma just blinks up at her, too stunned to speak, a small smile crinkles along the corners of her eyes and mouth. "Well, don't act so surprised. I did give myself away, a little, after asking a complete stranger to come with me. My god, I only knew you for four days."

"I -" clearing the dryness from her throat, Emma tries in vain to unstick her voice. "I feel - I feel the same way."

At this, Regina's expression wavers. After a beat, she stares looks away, staring instead at the yellow slant of light coming in from the porch outside. Leaf-shadows flicker across the wall, soften everything. Distantly, in another room, Henry's snoring goes on uninterrupted. 

"I see the way you look at me, sometimes," Regina quietly continues.

Immediately, Emma goes stiff. Like a rock sailing in through a window, her thoughts clatter with the worst possible explanation, with every moment she has ever allowed her eyes to wander, to drift down to the soft curve of Regina's stomach, the gentle arch of her neck, to the soft show of skin that peaks beneath her shirt whenever she leans up to reach something. It fills Emma with a horror so strong she is left nearly breathless. 

And then, Regina continues. "At that gas station, when I came back with coffee,.." she frowns, upset. "You looked at me like you couldn’t believe I came back. Like you were expecting me to just _leave_ you there. And then, after..." she sighs. "Well, after that...revelation about my mother, I understand how you could have thought I might leave you, but after I invited you in, after -- when you were playing with my son, and I asked you to get your things, you _looked_ at me like --” A long sigh blows out of her as she tilts her head away.

Emma stares up at her silently, her heart beating too loud in her throat to allow any words. Regina’s hands gradually slow, but they don’t slide away or disappear, resting warmly against Emma’s shoulders.

“I might be reckless," Regina says quietly. "Maybe that's true. But I don't leave things easily. I want - I want you to know that. I would never just leave you like that.”

“People have said that before.” Emma hears herself say, though she had not in fact meant to. She had meant to say something with more wit and understanding, something that could guide the conversation elsewhere. But instead, she just stares up at Regina with a wide, damp eyes. And waits.

The hands along her neck soften, pressing both thumbs against the bump of her spine. In her touch, Emma can feel that Regina wants to make a promise. She can feel it in the intake of breath and in the heavy silence that follows. But the words have all been said before, by so many different people.

Slowly, the hands move away. Pressing against Emma’s forehead, Regina directs her head back against the couch, until all Emma can see is the stucco ceiling and the soft brown cheeks and those eyes that calculate, and recalculate, that already knows every broken promise, every word that has been worn thin.

Regina softly bends over her. Until she can rest her warm cheek against Emma's, and wrap her arms around her shoulders. 

“Will you stay with us tonight?” she asks.

“Yeah, okay.” Emma breathes out shakily, overwhelmed. “Sure.”

It’s not a promise, but it _feels_ like it is. It's something.


	4. you will (kiss me) go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey there!! 
> 
> So a few things before we get started: since i let quite a bit of time go before writing this chapter, I decided to reread this story to get a sense of where it should go again -- which lead to a few changes. I've been writing Emma as a twenty six year old, and only realized now that I left her as twenty one! So I aged both her and Henry two years, just so it could fit a bit better in my head! Emma is twenty three, and Henry is six! SORRY
> 
> ALSO i rewrote the ending to the last chapter -- no big changes, I just wanted to rework the moment between them a bit before moving forward.
> 
> ALRIGHT. Thank you everyone who has read, reviewed, and continued to love this story. Y'all are amazing.

“–as I am now, I am the desert:

both oasis and wasteland.

an hourglass flowing to its infinite

End.”

 

 

 _\--_ from _in which the poet becomes the snake of eden, not the tempted //_ H. Yenna Kim

* * *

 

 

In a deep sleep, Emma doesn’t feel the bed shift or hear the old motel mattress creak with the routine noises of waking up. Her dream goes on, winding along a memory full of blue houses and white doors, where laundry lines hang between fence posts and window sills, where one of her many mothers clips wet clothes on a wire, and she is there too, helping like she used to, waiting for an off-chance, for the occasional warm, loving smile to turn down on her. The dream wobbles, nearly expands into reality -- it starts to take on a shape, sharpening the air with smoke and the smell of grass -- but then a woman laughs, and breaks her dream apart.

There is a sprawling warmth in her voice: “Sweetheart,” the woman says, smiling. “What did I just tell you? She can’t play with you right now, she’s still asleep.”

Her face tingles. The last of her dream flutters away like loose summer leaves. Breathing in, the smell of the slightly dusty, warm air of the motel places Emma fully in the present, waking her to a sun-lit room and a large, empty bed.

Or, nearly empty. “But Momma,” Henry whines. His knees rest warm against her stomach. “She could sleep forever.”

“Well, then you’ll have to wait forever,” Regina humors, her voice sounding farther away. It floats in from another room, between other sounds like the click of high-heels, the swish of cloth, and the slight tick of a metal hanger on metal. “Sweetheart, really, let her be. I’m sure she’ll wake up before  you age too terribly. Did you take your vitamins?”

“Yep,” he says, and sets an action figure -- probably his favorite one, that white blank-faced stormtrooper with one black pistol -- on the slope of Emma’s waist, trying to balance it. “I already took them.”

“Oh really?” Regina asks. From the sound of it, she already knows the truth. She is aware of every fact and secret about her son, full of inestimable knowledge that sits calmly on a shelf in her head like jars of dried herbs. “What color were they?”

“Um...blue.”

“Really? They weren’t orange?”

“Uh ...yeah, they’re orange!”

“They’re all white as snow, little liar,” she laughs. “A _l mentiroso le conviene ser memorioso._ Just how long have you been tossing your vitamins?” As Henry groans and whines, full of excuses, the sound of Regina’s footsteps reenters the room, her warm voice following close behind, right after the other like stairs. “Well, now you get to eat twice the amount, my darling. Come on.”

Henry lets out a deep sigh, but goes willingly, lets himself be lifted into his mother’s arms, laughing at all the kisses she sneaks, smacking loud and warm on the skin between cheek and ear. It fills Emma with a warmth, a bright inner presence, like a light bulb bursting inside her chest; there is this memory, this silk-light laugh and the noise lips make against skin.

But no, it’s not a memory, yet -- it’s happening right now. She can be a part of it. Her heart, an eager, weary muscle, guides her out of bed and nearly all the way to the entrance until her feet slow, growing hesitant. Walking slowly, she hovers in the corner of the soft-lit kitchen where breakfast is being put together. She watches Regina beat a bowl full of eggs with a wire whisk and hum a melody to herself.

It takes only a moment to be noticed. Regina glances up, catches her standing there only watching. Her eyebrow arches, dotting a question. 

“Sleep well?” she asks.

“Yeah. I did, actually,” Emma croaks. The back of her neck warms, remembering the soft, sleep-driven contact that thinned the depth  of her sleep a few times, jolting her into a semi-alertness with soft, absent touches, like Regina’s nose pressing against her neck or the bump of her toes, how she tucked a hand beneath her shirt for warmth. Her heart thunders, full of anxious happiness. “Can I help?” she asks tentatively, wanting so much to be a part of things.

A warmth spreads across Regina’s cheeks (is she thinking about it too?), but all she says is “Of course,” with a soft smile, and clears the counter space, making room.

***

 

After breakfast, they pack up and all climb into the car. The day is bright and windy, carrying in the smell of flowers too far away to see. Pastures extend steadily to the end of sight, green, immense, and nearly impenetrable, like the sky, only ever interrupted by water tanks and farmhouses. It is easy to forget that it’s not just them in the world, that there are others living ordinary lives beside their own, in cars or in houses, going about their daily lives, sitting down for dinner, talking about their days, filling the car with gas, (falling in love).

Somehow she has managed to slip in, unnoticed, along all the other ordinary families. They talk about future plans, play old car games, watch the world go by, hoping for the best and thinking about the worst.

Which is never too far away.

As they are driving along fields of thin-limbed olive trees, one of the car tires pop. It happens in the middle of a conversation -- Regina’s attempt to convince Emma that one of the puffy, white clouds above them very clearly resemble Theodore Roosevelt (don’t you see it? see, that’s his chin, his forehead, his glasses. oh come on, you must see it). Just as Emma is about to lie and say, ‘Oh yeah, I totally see it,” there is a loud _pop_ , and the grit and smell of asphalt in the air.

“D _amn it_ ,” Regina snaps. The car groans and wobbles, slowing down. Gravel flies up against the window like hot-embers. “God damn it.” she sneers, just a show of teeth, and hauls the car into the green weedy shoulder of the road.

When the car finally settles, coming to a slow-full stop, Regina hits the flat of her palm against the steering wheel twice. “Damn it,” she clenches her teeth. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” Emma tries to resemble calm. “This is fine. You have a spare tire, don’t you?”

“No. That _was_ the spare.”

“Okay,” Emma sighs and rubs her forehead. “That’s okay. We’ll figure it out.”

“Oh, will we? _How_? We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere with a goddamn --” Catching Henry’s worried, frightened eyes in her rearview mirror, Regina’s fright immediately switches to steel-like motherly calm like a speeding train quickly changing tracks. “Oh, sweetheart, I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s not a big deal -- just a tire. It can be replaced.”

Henry tentatively nods, reassured by his mother’s simple reasoning.

But the moment they leave the car and Henry is out of earshot, investigating the dirt for any interesting bugs, Regina loses her calm again.

“God damn it,” Regina grimaces, and runs an agitated hand through her short dark hair. The tire sits half-deflated beneath the car like an old balloon. “What are we going to do? Do we call a tow-truck?”

Emma squints down at the road ahead of them. The asphalt glints black with sun, seems to go on for miles and miles, disappearing into a cold ice-blue sky.

 She sighs, “I don’t know,” Wiping a curly blonde hair from her forehead with the back of her wrist, she cups a palm around her eyes to better see the distance. She squints down at it for miles. “It’ll probably end up being a hundred or more just to get the car to  a shop, and that’s not gonna include the tire.”

“Well, what do you suggest, Emma?” Regina snaps. The more worried she gets, the more irritated she sounds. The lines around her mouth deepen. “Isn’t that why I took cash out? To cover for these kinds of costs?”

“Well, yeah. But most of that should be for food and shelter. That kind of stuff,” Staring down at the busted tire, an icy jolt of nervousness shoots through her heart, knocking her briefly with reality: Regina couldn’t possibly have had all that much cash to begin with -- not if she’d been relying on her card --  it will be dwindling down pretty fast now, probably more than Regina will admit: lost in the miles behind them, in coffee cups, gas hoses and motel rooms. “No,” she sighs, and rubs her forehead. “Look, don’t bother with the tow-truck, alright? It’ll be fine, I’ll figure it out.”

“How do you plan on doing that?” Regina gripes moodily at her tire.

Well. No idea of hers will ever float well, no matter how she presents it. Still, Emma gives her her warmest, most reassuring smile. Then points her thumb at the road. “You don’t mind hitchhiking, do you?”

Regina’s face immediately turns to stone. “That better be a joke.”

“Look, it’s really not that bad --”

“ _Miss Swan_.”

“Come on, it’s easy, you just --” Walking back a step back, Emma juts her thumb out toward the road. She watches a car whizz by, smiles. “See? It’s that easy.”

With the same deadly finality of a fly swatter, Regina slaps Emma’s hand out of the air. “We are not _hitch hiking,”_ she growls, and then points a glacial look to her Mercedes. The car merely glints back, looking as sullen and disobliging as a large sunken ship at the bottom of the ocean. She sighs. “I will just call a tow truck.”

“Oh yeah?” Emma frowns. “You got a secret stash of cash in the soul of your heels or something?”

Regina turns her narrowed eyes to Emma. “I didn’t realize you had such a close eye to my finances, Miss Swan,” she snaps. But upon hearing the accusatory tone of her voice, she sighs. “I just don’t see the problem. I have more than enough money, don’t I?”

“Yeah, maybe,” she grimaces. “If you’re planning on driving about a week more. You got enough for that,” Catching the fright in Regina’s eyes, she sighs, softens. “Okay -- look, we’ll figure something out, alright? I just think we should make what we have last--”

“If I’m so doomed, then a hundred dollars doesn’t make much of a goddam difference, does it?” Regina snaps, and walks in a half circle, yanks an agitated hand through her hair. “ _Fuck_.”

“You’re not doomed,” An inner tug of feeling nearly directs her fingers to the small, tense place between Regina’s shoulder blades, where her blue dress dips and an inner working of stress is mapped out across her muscles. But after a moment, she meekly retracts. “Look,” She sighs. “I told you, we’d figure it out. Or well -- I’d figure it out.” Regina just cuts her a look over her shoulder. She smiles weakly. “I may know a thing or two about getting quick money.”

“I’m sure you do,” Regina sighs, and presses a hand against her temple -- a sign of wearing down, of grudging acceptance. As if sensing Emma’s anticipation, Regina directs a dark look at her. “I still don’t like the idea of getting into a stranger's car, Emma. I just don’t.”

“I do it all the time,” Emma offers her warmest small. “It’s lead to a few good surprises.”

Regina, far from comforted, scoffs in offense. “That’s not the same, at all. Not at all. I wasn’t a complete stranger when you came with me -- and -- it’s different, you know it is, you’re not just getting a ride, we’re not just traveling together, we’re --” she cuts herself off immediately, her cheeks flushing red, but Emma doesn’t laugh at her; her heart is beating harder, running up against her ribs at the possibilities of where that sentence could have gone --

It might have been about the road, about her mother, about running away, but maybe -- maybe it had more to do with how her hands have started to linger on Emma’s back or shoulder, resting for a deliberate moment before moving away again; or maybe it has something to do with the late hours, how sometimes Regina will doze off on her shoulder or wrap her arms around her, press her nose into her neck, always seeking out those positions in bed where skin meets skin; or maybe it is just about all the time they have shared together lately, how all of her memories have started to collect and collide, messily, into something oddly like a life -- it moves from hour to hour, uninterrupted, with no bottom or top.

“No, we’re not,” Hearing the tremble in her voice, Emma clears her throat, trying to swallow down her heart again. “But -- uh, we should really still find a ride. You know, it’s really not so bad.”

After a moment, Regina grimly nods. “Very well,” she firmly sets her sunglasses atop her head. “But I reserve the right to refuse any car I don’t like. Without question.”

“Sure.”

“And without any of your teasing either, _Emma_.”

“Me? I don’t ever tease you,” Off Regina’s expression, Emma laughs-- it happens even in the cold air, even with a busted tire, even when the pointed end of Regina’s elbow finds her gut.

***

A car stops twenty minutes later -- a sleek red Tesla that had approached nearly soundlessly until the moment the engine revs, pulling to a swift, sudden stop beside them. A window rolls down to a man that could have easily been between the age of forty or twenty. He has that boyish blank quality of youth in his face, but his forehead has the sharp dooming incline of a quickly receding hairline.

“Need a lift, love?” the man asks.

“Um,” Emma frowns at the small car. “I don’t know. Can you even fit four?”

“Sure,” he answers, but his voice carries a wry, mocking tone, as if he were only making a joke. Emma grimaces, takes a glance at the back windows -- and while they are tinted, she has a feeling that even if she could look inside, into the private life hidden in personal belongings, there would be no larger discovery needed than what she felt she could see in his face. He looks at Emma with expectation, sparing only a brief, disinterested look at Regina, and even briefer at her kid, now half dozing on her hip.

“Uh, yeah. No thanks,” Emma answers.

The man blinks. “Are you kidding?” His voice is still light, but she can hear it: the dangerous iron that lies beneath some men, coiled inside like wire; the part that hears _no_ and clenches, crackles with rage, that hunts and threatens. His face darkens, even as he smiles. “You know, I stopped to do you a favor. That’s a long road you’re on -- you really gonna just keep walking?”

“Yep,” Emma grunts, unsmiling. “I think we’re all set here.”

‘Sure you are,” he smiles unkindly, and leans over, undeterred, to push open the passenger door. “Seriously, just get in.”

Regina pulls her sunglasses to the top of her head with a deep sigh of impatience, as if the aggression of a stranger is as unremarkable and predictable as the busted tire itself. “Well this is going about as well as I thought it would go,” she mutters. With a dry smile, says just to Emma. “Too bad we can’t just whack him over the head and take his ride instead, hm? Wouldn’t that be fun.”

Something warm flutters in Emma's stomach, despite everything. She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, no. Forget the tire, I'd want to switch out the seat belts, put in something more secure, like whatever they got on roller coasters now.”

“Oh, that’s funny. You know, you really seem to enjoy this fiction you created about me, that I drive like some maniac--”

“ _Fiction--_?”

“Which is _odd_ , since I seem to recall you agreeing not to tease me anymore, and seeing as I have held up _my_ side of the bargain--”

The man raps his knuckles against his car door. Both Emma and Regina blink, and reorient themselves to his existence. He scowls at them. “You two done having a chat?”

Any trace of humor immediately vanishes from Regina’s face. Her expression shifts into one of immediate impatience and disdain, like a car going from forward into reverse; she looks at the man, dead-on, with the cold, exacting impact of a dart hitting the middle of a board. A shiver seems to rattle loose his bones.

“Do you really need me to explain it to you?” she says, clearly, and with the sharp exasperation of someone who fears nothing but wasted time. “We are not getting into your car. You are going to zip your loud mouth shut, start up your car, and get the hell out of my sight,” Walking forward (even with a half-asleep child on her hip, she is an expert in heels), she moves until her shadow passes over his pale face, until she can take a grip of the open car door. “You got that, _luv_?”

Emma can't blame the struck-dumb look on the man’s face -- even with a child in her arms, Regina seems capable of just about anything. He just nods dumbly.

“Great.” She smiles and shuts the passenger door with enough force to rattle back some sense into the man. Immediately, his face reddens. He pulls back from the window with a grimace, returning his hand to the steering wheel.

“Whatever, bitch,” He sneers, but even in anger, his voice is thin and reedy. Faced with Regina, even violent, rageful men must sense the limit of their power. “Good luck finding another ride. Hope you walk until your heels bleed.”

“With pleasure.” She smiles beautifully.

There is the awful sound of wheels on asphalt before the car swerves out into the road, filling the air with dust. On Regina’s hip, Henry blinks with dazed irritation at the receding car, annoyed by the disruption of his day dreams.

“Sorry about that,” she says, to both mother and son, and reaches over to gently rub Henry’s back. She smiles at his shirt, a full galaxy of tiny blue rocketships and half-moons. “Sometimes you get a creep -- it happens far less than you’d think, but it happens. Usually, if you got a bad enough attitude, they drop it pretty quick.”

“Right,” Regina says, but her tone sounds strangely faraway, reserved. When Emma looks up, she finds her face drawn carefully blank, her eyes narrowed against the bright, sunny day. A windy silence catches and holds as they walk, lasting long enough for four cars to pass by, all carrying their own nimbus of sound, of soft conversation and radio-talk. Just as Emma is about to work out the start of her question, she hears Regina clear her throat. “So,” she stalls hesitantly. “How young were you when you started this sort of thing?”

Emma pauses, surprised. “Oh, uh...” She frowns, and shrugs. “I don’t know, about thirteen, I guess. Why?”

There is a flicker in Regina’s expression. It looks just a little bit like sorrow. “Oh...” she says, and nods. There is a slow intake of breath. “I...I suspected  -- but I had no idea you were so young. Practically a child.”

A feeling socks Emma in stomach. It comes so unexpectedly, she feels an age-old illusion inside of her shatter, remembering, suddenly, the heedless, mean-spirited way she used to make her life sound to the other kids in foster homes, how she’d turn every disappointment, every sorrow, into some kind of freedom the other kids would never know.

Staring into Regina’s face, she feels some part of her deep inside clench up, like a child about to cry. Some part of her thinks: _You were so young. Practically a child,_ and wonders what would happen if she could spread her life out like a map beneath Regina’s eyes, show her all of the hurt and damage tangled up inside, whether she’d be able to make better sense of it than she has.

But she can’t -- she doesn’t even know where to start. Swallowing, she puts on a smile. “You uh, you’ve been carrying him for a while,” she says, and extends her arms tentatively, hands out flat. “Want me to take over?”

Regina gives her a long, searching look. But eventually, she nods. As she passes Henry over gently, she steps closer than necessary, just to press a soft sweet kiss against her son’s cheek. All the while, her hands linger on Emma’s elbows (as if to hold her, too).

***

Thankfully, another car stops just a few minutes later. Emma hears the sound of it first, the ancient rumble of its engine and the grumble of gravel as its wheels turns off from the road.

Regina pauses and glances behind her. At the sight of an old white Chevy truck, complete with a large trailer hatched behind it, approaching them, she sighs. “If it’s another white guy, I’m getting my gun.” she mutters.

But when the truck stops, the door pops open to a woman. She leans out, smiling brightly at them. “Hey there,” she  calls, and rests a brown arm against the roof of her truck. “I’m guessing you all might need a ride?”

In the trailer behind her, the unmistakable snout of a horse pokes through the wooden bars and breathes out a short dismissive snort.

Regina smiles, irrevocably charmed. “We do,” she smiles. “Thank you.”

There is a quiet, shuffling transition. The space inside the truck is small and tidy, smelling clean and well used like warm leather and pitch pine. Regina climbs in after Henry and rests calmly in the backseat, sitting shoulder to shoulder with her son against the soft, worn leather. They both look out the window, quiet and alert, taking note of everything.

When they’re like this, with almost mirror-like resemblance, it’s hard to look away. Emma watches until the abrupt sound of the door slamming shut jars her back into the present. Turning, she catches the woman smiling warmly at her. Her eyes are dark and warm, holding the secret of the last few seconds.

“I’m Marian.” she offers warmly, and extends a hand.

“Emma,” she supplies, unable to do anything more than offer her own hand with a slightly stunned embarrassment. Marian’s hand is warm and dry in her own, and has a grip that could crack walnuts. “Er, thanks for stopping, by the way. I was starting to think that nobody would,” she gives a slight smile. “And that the woman back there might kill me for making her walk all those miles in heels.”

“Oh good lord,” Regina snorts. “Please ignore her, I’m afraid she’s rather taken on a version of me that’s far more interesting and evil than I really am.”

“I wouldn’t say more interesting,” she says. “Or more evil.” she adds, and gives Henry a conspiratorial  wink. The boy erupts with laughter, simply happy to be a part of the joke, and Emma laughs with him, her happiness intimately tied to him and his poor, smiling mother.

“Well,” Marian says, voice bright and smiling. It brings all three of them back. “I’m glad to help. You three seem like a very happy family.” At the trick word, Emma’s ears burn, filling her head with a blank, woozy warmth, a high buzz of blood. But before she can say or do anything stupid, Marian starts the engine, checking her with motion. The dashboard lights up, giving back the time and the distraction of the radio. Lil’ Richard sings “Send Me Some Lovin”.

“So,” Marian turns a bright smile on them. “Where am I taking you?”

Behind her, Regina quietly clears her throat. She is hiding a smile with her fingertips, pressing them gently to her mahogany lips. (She looks beautiful when she’s happy -- especially like this, this flushed, frazzled happiness that lights her up from the inside.)

“Just to the closest car shop, please.” she manages finally, sounding soft, far away.

“Then you’re in luck. I happen to know a real cheap one.”

With a smooth, gliding hand, Marian turns the truck toward the long, black highway, the wheels rolling powerfully over gravel. Through the open window, cool air whistles by, still carrying the faint, distant smell of flowers. A warm, drowsy happiness seems to settle in the car, floating on the soft crackle of music and that single uncorrected lie, coasting alongside them in the silence: that they are all family here, forever on the same road, moving toward a place that expects them; toward a future that means home for all three of them.

***

By the time they’ve bought the tire, dragged it back into Marian’s truck, and all climbed back in again, a certain wary exhaustion has entered the air. The afternoon is beginning to make its long descent into early evening. Emma can sense the dread ticking behind Regina’s blank, dark eyes: counting the minutes, the days, and every mile that puts them behind schedule. She knows, by now, how to read Regina when she’s like this -- her fear will start as just a mild irritation, and then she’ll turn cool and distant, distractedly snappish as her attention is lost to some inner dread inside or to the ones miles and miles ahead of them. At the end, when there is no where else to go.

 Emma stares at the back of Regina’s neck, pulled in by a powerful longing. She wants to crawl back there, lean her cheek against her neck, hold her, maybe help her carry it this time -- this seemingly endless worry. Does it end? How could she possibly help?

After a while, as they are approaching the parked Mercedes, Marian clears her throat. “You know,” she says, “I don’t think there are any motels around here, not until at least a few hours. Are you guys going to be okay on the road?”

“Of course,” Regina answers, voice sharp. Emma cringes, and so does Regina. She sighs, rubs her tired forehead. “I’m sorry. Thank you for your concern, but we will be fine.”

There is a moment of silence. Olive trees flicker by, as thin and steady as fence posts.

And then, hesitantly, Henry peeps up. “How much longer is the drive, Momma?” His voice is as quiet and blameless as rain, but it pierces his mother as thoroughly as an icepick might.

She closes her eyes. “Honey,” she seems to need more air, just to bear hearing her son’s disappointments said aloud in her own voice. “It’s going to be a little while longer. I’m sorry, we haven’t even -- it’s just going to be a little while longer.”

 Marian waits until she is pulling her truck to the side of the road. And then she turns back to Regina. “You know, I live very close to here. If you’d like, you three could stay the night,” she smiles warmly. “We have guestrooms we never use. It’d be nice to give them purpose.”

“Oh,” Regina sighs and struggles for a polite way out. “That is a very nice offer. And we appreciate it very much, but we’ve already taken so much of your time.”

“Oh please, we’d be delighted,” Marian says, her eyes sparkling. “Honestly, it’d be refreshing. It’s so rare to meet anyone not white or straight up here.”

Emma’s heart kicks up against her ribs like a rabbit in a snaFre. She turns back to watch Regina hesitate, silently mulling over having nearly three hours to drive or simply rolling with this ...well, it’s not exactly a lie. Just a vague untruth.

 “I don’t know,” Regina frowns, and darts an upward glance to Emma before quickly looking away again. “We really should be on the road.”

“Well. I won't put any more pressure on you. But if it helps to know, you’d be a great help to me. My wife is cooking tonight, and she _always_ , without fail, makes enough to feed an entire house of people three times a day, for a month.” she laughs, and turns her warm eyes to Regina, as if they were both members of the same club, both deeply exasperated and in love with their wives.

Regina gives back a somewhat helpless smile, seemingly unable to stop herself. “Well,” she purses her lips, and glances quickly to Emma. Then just as quickly she turns to her son. “How about it, darling? Would you like to have dinner with Marian and...” she blinks, and offers a soft, embarrassed laugh. “I’m sorry, what’s your wife’s name?”

“Mulan.” Marian smiles.

Like a switch, Henry’s excitement lights up. “Like the _warri0r?_ ” he hollers, amazed.

“ _Henry_.”

“No, it’s okay, she loves that kind of thing,” Marian chuckles, and then warmly concedes. “Alright, no, she hates it. But I love it, and happily encourage it.”

“Momma, _please_?” Henry pleads.

Regina sighs and glances briefly out the window, just to touch base with the world outside, to make sure it is all still there and not yet swept away. But she concedes, as her son knew she would. He wraps his thin arms around her, and she smiles, gently rubbing his back as she tucks his head beneath her chin, saving herself -- for a moment -- from her fear.

***

They follow behind Marian in their own car, turning off into a dirt road that leads into a rolling green countryside. Through acres of green, weedy pastures and farm houses, it’s a while before they stop at a square blue house on a large white porch. A pot of geraniums sit bright and red on the windowsill.

When they park, Regina thankfully jumps at the chance to help Marian with the horses. Gratefully, Emma finds herself  something safer to do. 

Their house is large, with a simple beauty. It’s in the old wooden floors, in the striped wallpaper, in the wide-open, bent wood windows. There is a happiness here, too -- she can see it everywhere, in the tossed shoes in the corner, in the pictures on the wall, in the warm, open air.

She can hear it in the voice that calls out, “Marian? Honey, that you?”

Emma offers a slightly guilty smile when she rounds the corner instead. But Mulan doesn’t seem very surprised. She merely sighs, and grabs an extra wine glass from the cupboard.

“She does this all the time,” Mulan explains later, as she is handing Emma her second glass of wine (she has a quick, precise hand -- Emma hadn’t even seen her pouring this one). “I’ve never met anyone so terrified of leftovers. She’d welcome the dead into this house if it meant she didn’t have to put anything in tupperware.”

Emma laughs.

Outside, the final sliver of sun disappears behind fields of grass and metal pailing. Time has slipped by without her notice, passed with a single glass of wine and a bluing landscape. On the porch, she can hear a soft, warm voice (Regina’s?) say, lightly. “Oh, she’s wonderful with him. Absolutely wonderful.”

As dinner cooks in the oven, Mulan tells her their story. “I was a bartender when I met her,” she fondly wipes a plate dry with a towel. “She played it so cool in the city, I honestly thought she went to the same dingy bar every Friday night just for the gin and tonic.”

“What happened?” she eggs.

“I guess it depends,” Mulan says, laughing. “If you ask her, she’ll tell you some story about a grand, romantic gesture she made. _Total lie_. She spent fifteen minutes trying to ask me out, without actually asking, and was near tears by the end of it. I thought she was trying to order a complicated drink!”

Emma laughs loudly, happily buzzed off wine and good-feelings. (She can almost imagine the story she’d tell in her own future, in a kitchen like this; she’d say, “I was a waitress when I met her. When her car got fixed, I thought she’d leave, but she ended up dragging me across the country with her instead.”)

Time passes. By the time Mulan is pulling dinner out, Emma’s glass has been refilled twice. She is loose and smiling, leaning against the counter with a stomach full of warmth.

“Dinner is ready,” Mulan announces, and sets the salmon against the stove top. “Ah, beautiful! Let’s see if we can lasso in the wives, shall we?”

And so Emma slips off, heart soaring at the very thought. She walks silently, smiling to herself as she roves around the darkened house, searching for Regina-- her _wife,_ in this moment, at least.

At the very end of a hallway, she finds a room with its lamp on, where light yellows the walls. Through the slip in the door, she spies Regina with her son on her lap and a book on her knees. She is carefully guiding him through each line.

“Un hilo delgado y sedosa,” she enunciates slowly, and waits for Henry to echo. His voice is slower than hers, more uncertain, but he follows along well. “Era dejado por su cuerpo. La arana llegó -- no, _llegó -_ \- good, darling -- a un poste de la valla cera al patio de una finea.”  When he finishes, she smiles brightly, and kisses the side of his temple. “That was _wonderful_ , darling.”

A flutter of feeling takes over Emma’s stomach. As she rests against the door frame, she sends a beam of hope into her future. _Let me have this_ , she thinks. _Let me be with them, always._

Regina glances up suddenly, as if she heard all of Emma’s hopes spoken aloud. Emma reddens, and straightens up.

“Er, sorry,” She sends a hand nervously through her hair. “Um. Dinner is ready.”

“Ah,” Regina’s warm eyes flick down to Emma’s bare feet and then up to her blonde hair. As if she can count glasses of wine by posture alone. She smiles. “Well. Henry, you already had your dinner. Time for bed.”

“No.” he grumbles, even as he blinks back sleep. “I’m not tired.”

“Don’t even start,” she pinches his ear playfully, and he laughs, lets himself be straightened out on his bed. “Alright, bed, bed, bed. Would you like Emma to say goodnight to you, my dear?”

When he nods, Emma feels all the air leave her lungs. She can’t imagine ever getting used to this. Having this every night. Oh, please, _please_ , let her have this.

Full of love and an worried hope, she bends over to press a kiss against his cheek. “Night, kid,” she whispers, blinks backs the warmth in her eyes -- _yes, okay_ , the wine was a bad idea.

“Alright,” Regina says softly. She has an expression on her face that is half-shut with her own thoughts, but warm, like the light in the evening, holding a steady, full tenderness. She leans down to give her son a gentle purposeful kiss on the cheek. “Goodnight, my love.” she whispers.

Then she is up, turning the lights off and leading Emma out into the hall. When the door closes, Regina catches Emma by the wrist, turns on her with a false, smiling outrange.

“And just how many drinks have _you_ had?”

Warmth rises to Emma’s cheeks. “Um,” She smiles. “I think you’d better ask Mulan that. She’s been sneaking me them all evening.”

“Of course she has,” In the half-dark, Regina’s lipstick looks nearly black against her smile. She is gripping Emma’s wrists gently, holding her steady. “Ridiculous. I can’t take you anywhere, can I?”

Emma grins, “I hope you do,” she says, like an idiot. The way Regina’s eyelashes flutter (quick and then slow, as if from an unexpected jolt) fills her stomach with a flickering warmth. She feels herself moving closer, sliding her palms slowly along Regina’s arms, to the back of her elbows. “I like going places with you.” she whispers softly, close to her ear (because alcohol can make her warm and hazy and prone to sex).

  _Oh_ yeah, the wine was a bad idea.

A moment passes, in hushed silence. And then slowly, Regina steps back, a flare of red on her cheeks.

“Right. Well. Me too,” she clears her throat and glances quickly over Emma’s shoulder where the entry of the living room. The doorway is lined with bright, sourceless light. But she does not immediately step out of Emma’s arms. She lingers, still gripping Emma’s wrists. And then, slowly, she reaches up to fix the lapels of Emma’s red jacket, slowly smoothing it out, flattening out its little creases and folds, zipping it up again. “Honestly,” she mutters, cheeks still red. “Do you have no other jackets?”

“Um,” she offers a faint smile. “I think I probably do.”

“Right. You probably stole two,” she sighs, sounding cool and humorous even with those red, red cheeks. But she cannot hide the tremble of her fingers, still curled around Emma’s shoulders. “We -- we should get to dinner, shouldn’t we?”

Emma just nods dumbly, and lets herself be guided into the living room, where Mulan and Marian wait patiently. Where a table is set for four, in a house made for happiness. _Please_ , she thinks silently. _Please, please, please_.

***

Dinner is a short, happy affair. It seems to blur seamlessly into more drinks in the kitchen where they swap their love stories. Or rather Mulan and Marian tell their love story. Regina, competitive at heart, spins the truth into such a functionally romantic tale, Emma almost half-believes it by the end.

(She thinks maybe Regina gets caught up in it too, because by the time dinner is done, there’s a hand sliding down to her thigh. Little sparks of electricity passes through her whenever Regina squeezes her knee).

It’s getting late, but nobody seems ready to call the night to an end, so as Marian puts on some music, Mulan pours everyone another round of drinks.

 Some soft, upbeat music plays from the speakers, sounding bright and almost banal, but it buzzes in the air around them. It seems to buzz in the short, compact space between Emma and Regina’s shoulders. Regina seems to feel it too, because she gets restless after her third drink, sliding her coat off her bare shoulders.

In a blue, sleeveless dress, her beauty is unavoidable -- it announces itself in the bones, in the smooth plane of her back, and in the loose, liquid way she turns and smiles, accepting another drink.

When Regina looks at Emma, warmth flares bright inside her, gaining momentum the way it does before she slides into a good memory. But this doesn’t feel like going backwards -- this has a different feel to it entirely, a powerful, sure push, like wind filling a sail.

Just then, with the sudden instrumental blare of Rosemary Clooney’s “Sway” blowing through the room, something happens. They are standing in the kitchen talking, and then, suddenly, they aren’t; Marian is pulling Mulan out to the living room for a dance; Regina, following their lead, guides Emma’s arm around her waist, captures a nervous palm and flattens it against her lower back. She dances with her freely, laughing at  her every mistake. Her beauty is unavoidable.

The room spins, a whirl of glossy color. Songs pass. The Kinks thump “Strangers,” in the air as Regina laughs and allows herself to be spun a half-circle away before coming back again.

“You catch on quick,” Regina whispers, in her arms again. Her voice is bright and unsteady, like the lights in the room, and instinctively, Emma holds her closer, as if that could keep the room from slipping away. It must translate somehow into _slow down_ because Regina’s hands slide down to her arms, turning their movement to just a soft sway, like boats moored at a dock. “You okay?” she whispers.

“Yeah,” Emma quickly nods. In the calm blur, the lights reorder themselves in front of her eyes, until finally, she has to lay her forehead against Regina’s neck. “Okay,” she gives a breathy little laugh. “Maybe I’m a little too buzzed for this.”

 “Buzzed?” Regina hums dryly. “Is that what you’re gonna call it?”

“Till I make an ass of myself, yeah.”

“Well at least we won’t have to wait long for that -- _Ouch_ \-- my, you sure are ambitious.”

Laughing, Emma leans into Regina. As they sway, the room finally settles, returning as a bright, haphazardly furnished living room. A silver earring tickles her skin as Regina turns to rest her lips against Emma’s jaw, replacing the quiet thrum of music with the _badum badum badum_ of her heart. From somewhere behind them, Marian laughs lowly, still dancing with her wife.

Moments pass. Lights shine distantly on the horizon, gradually blinking out into the dark.

“You know,” Regina quietly whispers. “You said once that you could imagine me and Henry on a beach. When things calm down, you said that’s where we should go,” she says, and gently pulls back, smiling at her. “I think I see you somewhere else.”

Emma blinks. There is a short, suffocating silence.

“Oh, yeah?” she musters finally, feeling gutted. “Where is that?”

“Somewhere like this,” Regina is still smiling, looking to their surroundings. On the window sill, a Mason jar sits full of daisies.  The land outside is as black as the sky, dotted only with bright stars and the the lights from distant farm houses, still lit from inside. “Somewhere with a big yard,” she continues, smiling. “And chickens maybe, since you’re apparently terrified of horses. A porch and plenty of space,” she says, and adds softly. “I can see you being very happy there.”

Emma nods mildly and looks away.

It’s just. When she had suggested the beach, she had imagined a future that was utterly complete without her: a simple, beautiful happiness  meant for only two. If that is still the future Regina wants, the one plotted at the very end of their road together, Emma wouldn’t blame her. Not at all. But the very thought opens a trapdoor in the floorboards between her feet, black and depthless as a keyhole.

“Is it close to the beach?” Emma whispers, before she can stop herself.

Regina looks at her quickly. And then her dark, bright eyes crinkle warmly. “Oh, yes. Very close,” she whispers, and tentatively, tucks a blonde curl away, behind an ear. “It’d be right outside your front door.”

***

After that, something seems to edge in between them. As they head off to bed, some high, tickling promise buzzes in the air, keeping close the once distant possibility of sex. There’s something about Regina’s expression, about the way her eyes follow down the path of her body, tracking her in the dark that sends an electric hope into Emma’s chest. She thinks: _We’re going to sleep together. This is going to happen._

But that hope falls flat the moment she walks into their guestroom. There, past the shelves and a desk is the one bed they will share together -- the one where Henry sleeps on now, curled peacefully on one side.

She thinks maybe a look pained look of resignation flashes on Regina’s face, but it passes so quickly, it may have only been her imagination.

With nothing else to do, they prepare for bed. Still a little drunk, Emma is clumsy in the dark, bumping against corners and hidden toys in the small, domestic space. She accidentally knocks into the tender part of Regina’s heel, which spoils any lingering thought of sex with a grouchy, hissing argument, so by the time they're both in bed, they manage only a grumpy muttered “Night,” before turning on their sides for sleep.

In the morning, Emma wakes groggily to a cool, icy-blue morning. Leaf shadows flicker across the pale bedspread and rests on Henry’s still sleeping forehead.

Regina is already awake, in a much better mood and sitting right beside Emma, a newspaper opened up across her lap. Black licorice-colored glasses sit on her nose as she finishes up a crossword.

Emma snorts, because what a _nerd_. But karma is doled out immediately, in the form of Regina nudging her with a knee, realizing she’s awake. “Hey,” she smiles, apparently just happy to see her. “You’re awake. Help me -- what’s the name of that nursery rhyme? The one about a bough breaking?”

“Ugh, no,” Groaning, Emma turns over in bed. “Don’t, I’m no good at this.”

“Yes you are,” Regina affectionately nudges her again. “Come on, remember last time? You practically finished the whole thing without me.”

“Go do a Sudoku or something.”

“Fine, we will skip to the next one. What’s a city in Oklahoma? It starts with a ‘T’ and has five letters.”

“Tulsa,” she sighs, and resigns to her fate. But the look of Regina’s triumphant smile so early in the morning brings a happiness so bright and warm to her chest that it swells, spilling through the slats of her ribs.

There’s so much of it, these days. So many moments, so many good memories. She hardly knows what to do with it all. What does a time traveler do with a life like this? A life so good you don’t want it to change?

By the time all the goodbyes have been said, and Marian and Mulan stand on the porch, smiling, waving them all away, a sense of imminence has entered Emma’s happiness, turns it wild and bright and restless. It has something to do with Regina’s smile, and how curly her dark hair is. How happy she looks.

The car windows roll down, opening up the air. There is just the empty rolling countryside, plains of wild grass and purple flowers. From the back seat, Henry tells a long elaborate story that seems to lack both a beginning and an end. When Regina looks at her, it’s with a bright, happy smile that tightens all the space in Emma’s chest, keeps silent the plea in her heart: _Please, please let this last._

***

The hours go by, lulling them into the familiar rhythm of driving. They pass by fields of empty farmland and bright shabby buildings, all displaying a sort of windswept beauty. Early morning light gradually shifts to midday, pointing out the shadows of each roadpost along the highway. When Regina finally grows too stiff to drive, she allows herself to be convinced into the passenger seat, where she alerts Emma to every possible danger with varying levels of alarm. Emma finally has to cajole Henry into playing another car game just to give them both some peace in mind.

Time passes. By the time the sky has turned black, Emma’s eyes are straining against the glare of the headlights and Regina is in the rare kind of mood that wants comfort more than a few more miles. Mother be damned. When an exit approaches, Emma turns off without another word and follows the dotted white lines to the distant glow of city lights.

The motel is a little fancier than usual. As Emma pulls their bags up to the front, Henry spots an outdoor pool with excitement. The water looks as flat and still as a black disk, but there is a small hot tub off to the side and a table full of towels, and so after a long discerning look, Regina grudgingly sighs and nods.

“I am not swimming, by the way,” Regina feels the need to clarify later. She is peering at a silver speckled mirror in the bathroom, wiping away the smudges of black mascara as Emma changes in the shower. “You can all freeze your butts off if you like, that’s fine. I will happily watch.”

“Oh come _on,_ you don’t wanna swim a little? There's a _hot tub_.”

Regina snorts. “Well. As enchanting as it sounds to dip into that cute little mosquito breeding ground, I will have to pass.”

Emma grins. Pulling her hair out of her way, she ties the strings of an age-old bikini around her neck, glances at Regina through the foggy glass. “So what, you’re just going to stand there in the cold?”

“Hm, yes. With a cocktail and my warmest sweater.”

With a snort, Emma slides the shower door open.

When Regina turns to look at her, she is smiling. And then, just as suddenly, she’s not; her expression shifts, taken by a strange surprise that washes over her. It is as if a quarter inch of her skin is pulled back.

When Emma looks down at her body, there are no surprises to find. There is only creamy skin, the familiar bumps of her ribs, and the old claw-like stretch marks she’s had for years, still carrying the memory of her labor: the way her stomach and spine had strained and pushed her outward like the hull of a ship, then returned her to herself only a month later with the same mechanical obedience of a conveyors belt.

Her labor had barreled through her, laid her at the very thought of love with a body so weary and tired, she could imagine in herself only the hollow, scraped-out kind of love she had ever known; a fragile, tired love that waits only to break, like a seashell on the shore.

Now, she can see her labor has added to the puzzle. It falls into place behind Regina's eyes, into the sprawl of guesswork that has her working and reworking the same equation in her head.

“Oh,” Regina says.

With a deep, shaky breath, Emma stares back.  She could slip back in time. She could remove her body’s piece to the puzzle, within a moment. But she doesn’t. She’s can’t -- she doesn’t want to.

She waits. Regina could easily undo it all, pull with needle-like precision at the thread of all her lies, to the point of revealing the secret still in the other room, playing with toy-soldiers. Or worse (it feels worse somehow), she could simply change the subject. She could treat Emma’s past with only a mild distracted interest, barely meriting comment at all.

Instead, Regina comes to sit on the edge of the toilet seat. She brings with her the silent depth of her understanding, the way the vast, watchful sky arches over the world, knowing all its struggles.

Gingerly, with just the tips of her fingers, Regina inspects the marks along her hips. “How old were you?” she whispers finally, and looks up.

Staring into Regina’s eyes, Emma feels a weighty tremble in her chest, the urge to unfold everything. There is a dangerous pull to telling the truth, a kind of intimacy that goes deeper than skin, than sex, than anything.

“Seventeen,” she whispers. Her voice crackles like radio wires, all sparks and odd pops. “He’ll uh, he’ll be nearly seven now.”

Regina looks up again. Something falls into place inside her head, something finally makes sense. But it must be a softer, kinder revelation than the one Emma is dreading, because it never wavers the softness in Regina’s expression. Gently, she slides her palm up to press fully against the soft plane of Emma’s stomach. Where an entire life rose from inside, and gradually flattened again.

“Do you think about him often?”

“Uh, yeah,” Emma musters up a laugh, but the tears shake it apart. “But...but it’s okay. He’s, he’s better off without me, you know? I knew, the moment I looked at him, he needed more than what I could give. I didn’t even know what a family was supposed to look like. I don’t think I was meant to ever have it.”

In the dim, humming light of the bathroom, Regina’s eyes shine, bright with what might be tears. When she stands, it is in a soft, fluid motion that leads her naturally to Emma, the way waves reach the shore. Her hand lifts up to Emma’s jaw, touches the strong jut of bone that, when clenched, could make her look mean and harsh. When she was a girl, she always made it clear -- she was too tough to mess with, too hard to love. Don’t even bother.

“Oh, Emma,” Regina whispers, quietly. “My sweet Emma.”

 An electric shock runs down Emma’s spine. It’s like an inner click, the way the feeling inside of her turns large and breathless, opens up an entire galaxy of desires. Regina sighs, smoothes her thumb gently along the top of Emma’s cheek, wipes away a tear. 

The feeling doesn’t break, not even when Henry barrels in with bright orange swim trunks a moment later, finally too impatient to wait. Something soft and invisible remains, even as they step apart, and Henry crashes into them, eager and unassailing. With a little laugh, Emma swings Henry up into her arms, and Regina, after suffering both their pleading looks, sighs and finally changes into her own bathing suit.

“It’ll be freezing,” Regina warns on their way down. Gingerly, she places her hand on Emma’s lower back.

As usual, she’s right.

After only just breaking the surface, Regina jerks up from the water with coiled precision, like a spring, sputtering for air. “God!” she gasps, and sucks back enough air to laugh. “We’re fools. Absolute fools!” she cries, her hair sleek and dark, plastered to her neck. Emma’s heart clenches at the sight, her teeth chattering in her skull. Henry lets out a laugh, clinging to Emma’s back, refusing to venture out on his own.

A  kind of happiness tumbles between them, full of an enormous otherworldly beauty like the constellations in the deep, black sky above them. They swim together -- all three of them kicking and splashing, catching each other’s ankles and pulling them down into the dark, blue depths.

 At some point, Regina turns unexpectedly to wrap her arms around Emma’s neck, shivering when their skin lights up again, like the soft hum of electric wires, carrying between their two bodies the hazy, unclear messages of the heart.

Regina lets out a shaky, exhilarated laugh and presses her lips to the corner of Emma’s jaw, just a sweet, barely-there impression of the lips that leaves the memory of a kiss behind. Shaking from the cold, Emma musters something of a laugh herself and holds her tighter.

***

By the time they leave, they’re all shivering. Regina carries Henry on her hip all the way back, and though she is no less graceful with chattering teeth than she is with heels, Emma rests a hand on the small of Regina’s back to steady her. It earns her a dry, amused look from Regina, but she’s not swatted away either, so Emma maintains the contact, rubbing a palm along the soft exposed bumps of Regina’s spine.

It’s just slightly hypnotic. To be so familiar with another person. To smell the chlorine on her skin, to rub a hand along her tired back. She knows the shape of Regina’s neck, the way of her shoulders, can easily point her out in a crowd.

 A whole future can be made up of this, only this.

When they enter their room, Emma slides her hand away, intending only to help set Henry back on the ground, but she finds instead an expression on Regina’s face -- a brief insight to what lay on the other side of lucker, happier people’s lives: who may look up, daily, to see this look of mingled brightness on their partners face, a look as much about desire as it is about happiness.

Something seems to edge in the air between them. Some high, ticklish feeling that builds from somewhere low in the belly. Regina must feel it too because she keeps glancing back look back at Emma, that mingled look of happiness and desire on her face.

Then, just as quickly, it’s gone. Regina’s attention is sucked back into routine as Henry pulls on his mother’s hand. Her traitorous heart deflates, bangs like a hammer against her ribs -- what was she _thinking_?

And yet, as Emma grouchily turns back to their suitcases, bent on just unpacking, she hears a floorboard crack behind her. A moment later, a hand falls against the small of her back, smooths a low half-circle along the skin.

“How about we forget about the suitcases, tonight?” Regina suggests, and though her voice never leaves its perfect imitation of composure, her touch delineates, flattening down the little bumps of bone. “Maybe you can pour me a drink?”

A warm, nervous hope fills Emma’s stomach.

“Oh yeah,” she says at last, letting out a half-laugh. “Sure. Of course.”

There’s a complimentary bottle of Jim Beam waiting on the other side of the room. Twisting off the cap, Emma pours Regina and herself a more than indulgent glass, enough maybe to settle her nerves, now about as red and unnerving as television static.

Behind her, she can hear Regina putting Henry to bed. There is the sound of low melodic humming --- a lullaby, maybe -- floating on the rhythm of unrecognizable words and the drowsy, declining sighs of a child quickly approaching sleep.

Sipping her drink, Emma waits. She stares out the small black window. By the light of the stars, she can make out the roofs of the brownstone buildings outside. Far below, where streets gleam beneath watery yellow lights, she can see a bright, fluorescent CLOSED sign hanging in the window of a flower shop. With another sip, she rests gingerly against the corner of a chair, tries to calm herself with the evening’s slow pace.

 _It’s not going to happen_ , she tries to tell herself. But it seems suddenly possible. That they might want the same things, in the same way.

Sex had started to feel so numb to her, so minimal and unmoving, she hadn’t thought about it in any serious way for years. But now, the very thought of _a kiss_ buzzes in Emma’s skin, makes her heart clatter against her ribs like handfuls of gravel. She can’t stop thinking about the slope of Regina’s neck, the square line of her jaw, what kind of sounds Regina might make, how her _skin_ might feel --

 When a hand touches her back, Emma nearly spills her drink.

“Easy there,” Regina smirks and accepts her own glass. She turns to sit on the small armchair beside her, crosses her legs smoothly at the knee. They are close enough for their arms and ankles to brush.

In the small, compact space between them, a clumsy excitement builds.

Feeling a little reckless, Emma gulps down the last of her drink, her lips pulling back instinctively from the cedar-like bitterness on her teeth. But the warmth in her chest helps weigh her back down. Puts her back in the moment.

But, an idiot at heart, it’s only a minute before she does something stupid.

She asks. “Are we going to have sex?”

Very little can surprise Regina. Or rather, she hates being surprised enough to make sure she never is. And though she makes a valiant  effort to seem unfazed, holding the alcohol on her tongue to delay any sort of reaction, when she finally swallows, the surprise remains, cracking humorously in her voice.

“ _What_?”

Emma is already cringing deeply, on her feet again and making her way unsteadily towards the bathroom for another chance, because _by god_ she’d offered even the occasional hook-up with more romance than that -- complete strangers who met her only that night, who woke up to an empty bed (and probably a little less money) at least knew her to be seductive, a little rough and alluring.

She could do better than _this_.

But Emma makes it only a few more steps. She’s halfway to the shower door before the bathroom light behind her is flipped on, brightening the space with a wincing light. Her heart _swoops_ with dread, but when she turns around, any thought of a serious chastisement disappears in the few steps it takes Regina to cross the space between them.

Two warm hands slide around her cheeks, pulls her across the invisible line to a world where Regina’s red mouth waits for hers. The kiss bumps hard with the impression of their teeth, but with a grunt of surprise, Emma adjusts, pressing back.

“You idiot,” Regina groans, and scrapes her teeth along the bottom of Emma’s lip. “I can’t _believe_ you asked me that and then just _left_. What were you going to do? Hide in the bathroom? G _od,_ ” Her voice skirts somewhat successfully over a growl, but she’s losing direction in her anger, her breath warming the expanse of Emma’s jaw in the gaps between open-mouthed kisses. “God,” she says again, for an entirely different reason, and sucks Emma’s skin into her mouth. 

Groaning, Emma arches into her. Nothing in her life has ever prepared her to be wanted like this -- to feel it in every kiss, in every single touch. It buzzes in her blood, warms her up from beneath the skin.

“How --how are we --?” Emma starts to ask, because the issue of _where_ is still just as urgent as it had been before, but Regina is distracted. She is kissing a hot trail down Emma’s neck, leaving behind the pleasant memory of her teeth. Emma groans, and clutches the back of Regina’s elbows. 

She sits down in the bathtub thinking that they will find a better solution eventually. But then Regina is following after her, stopping only long enough to pull her pajama shorts down her legs and toss them in the corner, then she is stepping over the porcelain lid to straddle Emma’s thighs.

Both hands come up to grip tightly at Emma’s shoulders. Emma can think of nothing else to do but touch her, trying, distractedly, to keep up with the motion of their kissing as the flat of her palm smooths slowly up, up, up Regina’s thighs.

When Emma enters her, sliding two fingers deep inside, Regina loses all her concentration, her kissing turning sloppy. As Emma finds her rhythm, working two fingers towards that flat, soft spot deep inside Regina, Regina gives up kissing altogether, releasing Emma’s mouth with the barest scrape of teeth to pant in short bursts of right against her mouth.

“Emma,” she groans into the musky air, again and again, holding on tighter.

She’s close, Emma can feel it, and though her wrist is aching from the tight angle, she lifts her hips to help their movement, deepening the connection until she can feel the familiar squeeze around her fingers. Picking up her speed, Emma has to grip the side of the tub to keep balanced, bumping knuckles until Regina comes with a ragged gasp; her body shudders in a violent spasm, her orgasm blooming up from somewhere beneath her spine and skittering up to the top of her head.

When Regina collapses back down against Emma, it’s with a thin sheen of sweat and a long, breathless groan. Their skin sticks, their bodies cooling with sweat.

In the quiet, enclosed space of the bathroom, there is just the soft, uneven sound of their breathing. There is the soft, tacky sound of skin sticking against porcelain as Regina weakly repositions herself, turning to tuck her head into soft slope of Emma’s neck and shut everything else out for a little while. Her breath slowly calms, splaying hot and warm across Emma’s chest.

Emma just rests quietly beneath her, still dazed and dizzy with her own arousal. She doesn’t have the voice to beg, her mouth still dry with the last ten minutes of effort. But thankfully, she doesn’t have to.

After a brief, quiet moment, Regina slides a hand up and down Emma’s ribcage, feeling out the spaces between her ribs where all the banging is.

“Ready?” she whispers. Her voice is thinner now, with a throaty edge, but she’s smiling again, so beautifully that it sends a thrill of electric pleasure up Emma’s spine. With a gasp, she nods and slides her legs apart.

More than an hour later, both too tired and sore to continue, Emma helps Regina into an uncoordinated sitting position, pulling their bodies together as she sinks them both back against the cool porcelain tub, their knees and ankles sliding gracelessly against each other. When all is quiet and still, Regina sighs and dips her head back to rest against Emma’s shoulder.

A quiet, peaceful moment passes by. The black sky is slowly giving up its depth, blueing behind the city, a black outline full of billboards, high-rise roofs, and telephone poles.

Pressing a few last kisses against Regina’s neck, Emma tries to get herself ready for the next transition, for standing up, separating, getting dressed again, but all of a sudden she’s thinking about what this all might become in the morning. It steals away some of her happiness, knowing that in the morning, the last few hours could slide back into meaning nothing, into being just a little fun between friends.

Or worse, Regina could wake up stiff and cold. The night could be remembered only as a clumsy mistake, rushed only by one-sided eagerness, felt too deeply.

She holds Regna tighter, trying to distract herself from the growing hum of anxiety with a few kisses, sucking on the sensitive spot right beneath Regina’s ear. And though Regina’s breathing revs, and she arches her neck, obviously welcoming the thought of more, Emma hears herself speaking.

“Would you change anything about tonight? If you could?” She murmurs, because apparently she can’t help but make hurdles for herself.

 It’s just. If Regina wanted something romantic -- if it was too clumsy, too quickly pulled together -- if she felt disappointment for even a second -- Emma would change it all for her. 

Regina blinks, and frowns, her pleasure creasing with harder, more complicated lines. “What?” she asks, her voice sounding sore.

“I mean,” Emma swallows. “If you could -- would you have wanted our first time to be any different? Like, in an actual bed? Or maybe, if I’d tried to actually romance you instead of -- of well, you know. Would that have been better?”

 “No.” Regina says. She says it so plainly, without even a hint of hesitation, that Emma finds herself waiting, expecting some minor complaint or disappointment to make obvious her secret dissatisfaction.

When it is obvious Regina intends to add no more, Emma frowns and starts up again, unconvinced. “Okay, well, what about  --”

“Emma, honestly,”  She sighs, closing her eyes. “You could have had plans to buy the most expensive wine and dazzle me with rose petals, and it wouldn’t have made any difference to me.”

“Oh. Okay,” Emma leans back, uncertainly.

As the air cools and the possibility of sex diminishes, Regina sighs and starts the work of getting up. Emma simply follows after her, flicking off the lights as she goes. And though Regina has never been the type of person to feign anything, not laughter or feeling, Emma finds herself worrying over the last hour, trying to match up the sounds Regina made to her slightly irritated _it wouldn’t have made any difference,_ going over it again and again like an under-the-skin splinter.

She doesn’t _get it_ until the morning.

She wakes to sunlight reflecting brightly off the mirror and right into her face. Blinking groggily, Emma groans, and tries to lift up. But then the front door is closed, and the glare is replaced by Regina, already dressed for the day, her hair lightly windblown; she holds in her arms a bouquet of bright, yellow flowers, the petals giving off a yellow shine as she carefully drops them into a vase.

Emma only understands that they are meant for her when Regina, moving towards her slowly, bends down for a smiling kiss. It’s just a quick peck on the lips, cleverly hidden behind Henry’s still sleeping head, but it leaves a hazy hum on Emma’s lips.

“Hello, darling,” Regina whispers, and tentatively curls a blonde curl behind Emma’s ear. It’s so casual, so simply happy that suddenly _it wouldn’t have made any difference_ makes sense.

This is what a good life can be: it doesn’t need her constant worry, it can stay on track well enough on its own.

With a thudding joy in her chest, Emma lifts up on her elbows for another kiss, just to reconnect, to feel the firm, steady fact of Regina against her lips. And after a soft sigh, Regina kisses her back.

*

For nearly two weeks, Emma finds herself living like everyone else -- without thought, her skill for time travel having been undercut completely by happiness.

Most mornings, she wakes up to a kiss and some half-finished crossword puzzle slipped into her lap. It seems no amount of groaning and complaining can actually convince Regina that she doesn’t love doing them with her, which is as much a part of her happiness as everything else is: to see all your lies turned over, brought back out into the light.

Emma helps along with the process. She can’t help it. No one really wants to be a stranger -- to be safely unknown to anyone who matters.

 She gives away pieces of her story the way her body gives to sleep. Thoughtlessly, absentmindedly, helpless to the quiet after sex -- which, if the furnishing allows, happens almost every night: in the tub, in the closet, on wicker chairs half-hidden by the balcony, and only once in an actual bed since Regina seems to enjoy these hurdles far too much to pay for separate rooms.

Once, as Emma is catching her breath, resting her forehead hard against the nape of Regina’s neck, she asks. “What are we going to do for Henry’s birthday?”

Regina frowns. With a gentle incline of her head, she glances back at her. “How did you  know Henry’s birthday was coming up?”

Emma freezes. She says, “You must have told me, once,” and knows its a mistake the moment she says it. Regina knows everything she has ever said to another person, holds inside of her an entire history of what she has allowed others to know. She would know every single detail about Henry, and have marked inside her head the people who she shared that knowledge with, the way investigations connect their suspicions together with bright red thread. “Or maybe Henry did.” she weakly adds.

The excuse merely bounces off Regina like a quarter on a canvas drum, but she must not be in the mood for suspicion because she merely lets it go with a soft hum and inclines her head for another kiss.

And then, only a few nights later, lying on a couch, recuperating against Emma’s neck, Regina whispers: “Do you ever wish you kept him?”

Half-dozing, nearing sleep, Emma thinks Regina is talking about Henry. Which, of course, _she is_ \-- but by the time Emma has remembered all the invisible lies beneath them, like titanic plates, shifting with a large imminence and the ability to destroy everything, she’s already answered.

“No,” she says, and tenderly squeezes her knees against Regina’s hips. “Not anymore. I know now, he’s happier where he is. I don’t regret it at all.”

Regina’s voice, muffled slightly by Emma’s throat, sounds strained. “You know where he is? I thought ...didn't you say it was a closed adoption?”

Emma’s heart pauses. With a quick shrug, she turns them over, puts warm, lingering kisses against Regina’s neck. After a second, Regina grudgingly sighs and exposes her neck, letting it go.

You forget, sometimes, what you can say to another person; that there are secrets better left kept.

(Her secrets might have all been more easily kept had Regina not seemed just as willing to let her stories go. She gave them away, piece by piece, along with Emma).

“I remember, before I left, it pained me to leave him for even an hour,” Regina says one night, when sleep doesn’t come, and the alarm clock merely continues blinking, restless against the dark like a satellite in the sky.

Emma blinks fully awake, brought suddenly up from a quiet doze into alertness. Turning to her side, she waits, looking for a sign. Whether Regina needs comfort or silence.

When Regina opens her palm, sliding the top of her arm a little closer to Emma on the bed, it feels as clear as a spoken request: _Come closer to me._

Plopping a warm cheek on Regina’s palm, Emma slowly settles, her eyes fluttering shut as a soft thumb lifts up to smooth along the top of her cheek, touch base against the crinkling corners of her eyes. The comfort in familiar skin.

Quietly, Regina continues. “I would leave him with a service,” she whispers. “Try to go about my day. But, always, in the middle of a meeting, or a phone call, or a conversation with my _mother_ , I would imagine his perfect little feet running. I’d imagine his laugh, and the way he cries. His simple fascination with my earrings. It would make me seize up -- I’d have to leave, just sit in the bathroom and cry -- I can’t even begin to explain the terror I felt. The fear. When I thought of his face, I saw a future where he was taken from me.”

Emma doesn’t need time travel to know exactly what Regina wants from her this time -- Regina has likely heard it all before, all the well-meaning, empty reassurances imparted like flowers on the doorstep of every tragedy. She’d have heard them early in life (like Emma), and grew up with distrust cupped like a heart inside her ribs.

Emma doesn’t tell her that Henry will always be safe; that Regina has nothing to fear. She gives only solid comfort, leaning her cheek against the slope of Regina’s palm and breathing in her warm skin until the tension of Regina’s fingers calm and the hard-hearted grip of terror slowly drains from her expression.

When she slips completely into sleep, Emma imagines telling her everything. All of it: about Henry, about herself, about what she can do. She’d tell Regina about the years she spent reliving her labor, the hours of sweat and exhaustion and heartbreak that pushed her to the same decision each and every time; she’d say, maybe, that while she never believed in fate, if all her days and mistakes were leading up to this, to crossword puzzles in the morning, kisses at night, and a whole life where love is simple and unquestioned to a boy she’d loved and gave up, then maybe the world has more sense than she gave it credit for. She’d give anything to keep it.

Emma doesn’t say any of this though. She knows better. You don’t get to choose what people believe; what they keep. Not even time travel can do that.

*

It’s impossible to pinpoint exactly _why_ it happens. Had Emma known the exact catalyst, she might have spent her whole life avoiding it. She’d have gambled for every hour, exchanged any slightly suspicious memory for a more careful one. But as usual, life is never so clear.

It happens one morning, after breakfast. When Henry discovers he’s lost his favorite toy, a tantrum rises inside of him like a ram, butting against all other emergencies; within five minutes, Henry is wailing in his mother’s arms, and Emma is hurriedly tearing the place apart, struggling to penetrate his despair with whatever hope she can scrape up beneath her doubt.

“Don’t worry kid,” she says with a harried breath, standing up empty handed from beneath the bed. “It’s gotta be here somewhere.”

“Do you remember where you last played with it, darling?” Regina asks, Henry still on her hip. As Henry wipes his wet cheek, deliberating thoughtfully, Regina directs a knowing look at Emma, points at the couch

Kneeling down, Emma grunts and pushes aside the stiffness of her joints, slipping the flat of her palm beneath the couch cushion. She feels blindly with her fingers, searching for something hard and plastic. It takes a minute, but as she’s feeling out the far left corner, losing hope, a small hard plastic gun pokes her palm.

It’s with a sort of breathless relief that she stands to see a familiar Stormtrooper in her hand.

“Is this him?” she asks as she enters the kitchen.

When Henry looks at her, his face transforms with relief. “You found him!” he cries, and shoots across the room. His head makes a solid impact on Emma’s stomach when he hugs her, but she lets out only a weighty tremble of a laugh, a little too relieved herself as she settles her balance again, both feet on the ground. “Thank you.” he murmurs sweetly, voice muffled.

“Course, buddy,” she says, and slouches over a little to wrap her arms around his back. She clears the heaviness from her throat, smooths his hair with her fingertips. “Glad I could help.”

Maybe she holds him a little too tightly. Maybe her face gives away all her love, all her loss. But whatever the reason, when Emma looks up at Regina, she doesn’t find the smile she’d been expecting.

Regina is staring at her with an abrupt look of surprise, like when a rock breaks the surface of a pond and ripples away any semblance of calm.

It lasts only for a moment. And then Regina’s brow smooths out again and she looks away. Everything seems to return to normal as Regina rushes them out the door, strapping Henry into his seat, and slamming shut the trunk when she's maneuvering to the driver's side door.

But in the hours on the road, a chill seems to fill the car, colder than the air whistling through their open windows.

“Hey, you okay?” Emma says a little later, when Henry is safely dozing in the warmth of the afternoon and the only thing between them is the quiet thrum of the radio. She rests a hand over Regina’s, moulding her palm around the tense complicated bones, squeezing gently. “You seem kinda stressed. You wanna talk?”

After a second, Regina simply shakes her head. She slides her hand away, returns it to the steering wheel.

*

A distance settles between them. Emma can’t explain how it happens; she’d thought, at first (in moments of sputtering hope) that it was just the usual stress hovering between them  -- not a bad sign, exactly, just too much driving, too many delays, too many worries. Running away gets old, after a while. But usually, after tunneling through miles and miles of distance, there is a golden moment at the end of the day, some semblance of safety that waits for them both.

But lately, those golden moments have faded.

Now, the worry seems to follow them out of the car. In the quiet space between them, when all Emma wants to do is hold her, pull her close, Regina feels as cold and silent as their hotel room, completely unreachable.

By the end of the week, a heavy dread has plastered on Emma’s heart like cement.

There are no more morning kisses or surprise flowers; the crossword puzzles are done solitarily, if they are done at all, because _now_ most mornings start with Emma’s arm stretching out across the cold, empty side of the bed and a tiny  jolt of panic to wake her up completely; though it never takes long to find Regina -- it’s an impossibly small place -- there is no comfort in the way Regina looks at her now; as if she were seated in an entirely different room, in an entirely different hotel, with only the chance of an open window for their eyes to meet.

Emma’s attempts at closing the distance slips by without grip. She’ll walk into a room, and find Regina suddenly in another. The tips of Regina’s fingers slide out of her own at any attempt to close around them, or she'll turn her cheek if any unthinking, sleepy morning kiss comes her way.

But the worst of it (Emma thinks), is the _silence_. Regina used to _talk_ to her - she could ramble on for hours about anything, about something she read in the paper that day or about a dream she had, just idly passing time with her.

Now, they have one-word conversations, plain and functional, just to get directions or confirm whether they need gas.

The breaking point comes one night, when Henry finally falls asleep.

Emma hadn’t intended to confront her. She’d been leaning against the door frame, watching Regina put dinner away. But upon staring at the familiar map of her back, the bumps of her spine, the back of her neck, a huge tangle of emotion catches painfully in her throat.

She’d meant only to ask, “Can I help?” but instead, leaning heavily against the doorway, she hears herself ask. “What’s going on with us?”

Regina pauses. She doesn’t glance back, merely asks. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” Emma huffs, but can’t quite hide the watery thread in her voice. She shrugs one shoulder, folds her arms around her chest. “I mean --  I don’t think we’ve said two words to each other all day. We certainly haven’t _kissed_ or...you know. Done any of that, in a little while.”

After a second, Regina merely hums and clicks the lid of tupperware in place with a dry snap. Emma thinks maybe she'll turn around, maybe she'll talk to her, but she merely pulls her sleeves up to her elbows, remote in her business.

Helplessly, Emma continues. “Not that that matters -- _I mean_ ,” she runs her fingers through her hair, getting lost as Regina briskly pops open the refrigerator door to toss the plastic container inside. “I just want you to talk to me again. I can’t even tell if you’re pissed at me right now, or just stressed. Maybe you want me the hell out of your life, I wouldn’t know.”

“Oh that’s _rich_ , coming from you.”

“ _What?_ What does _that_ mean?”

There's a slight pause. Regina's mouth makes a dry sucking sound, a spasm of contempt drawing her lips into a line. 

“I think you know what it means.” She says at last.

“No, I don't. So _tell_ me.”

Regina grimaces, locking her jaw.

Backed against the white kitchen tiles, the silence that follows stretches out like a cold, barren lot of snow. Emma watches the tension coil inside Regina’s body, curling her fingers into fists and bowing her neck. Everything but the slight dip of her back seems hard and unknowable to her.

A moment passes.

And then, with a deep sigh, Regina puts her palms down against the cool kitchen counter. “I have given...so much of myself to you,” she says, balancing the silent anger in her shoulders against her palms. “I’ve told you things that nobody else in the _world_ knows. I’ve let you into my life, into my _son’s_ life, and all this time -- you’ve only been playing me.”

“Regina -- _what_? No I haven’t -- Regina, come on. You know me better than _anyone_.”

“No,” Regina says, and curls her fingers into her palms. “I don’t think I do.”

“But...” Emma’s head is reeling, struggling to keep up. “But, I’ve -- I’ve only ever been myself with you.”

“Oh, sure you have,” Regina sneers, her voice rumbling with an enormity like a freight train. “You’ve just been wonderful, haven’t you?”

“What -”

“Honestly, I don’t see how I didn’t think to wonder -- no stranger would have been so kind, so eager to help, not if they didn’t have something to gain. I should have known, the way you just showed up with your big, sad eyes, and started helping out .”

“Regina, what are you _talking_ about?”

“You’ve tangled into my life so effectively.” Regina’s breathing changes, turning shallow and shaky. “I don’t know what you’re up to -- maybe you’re waiting for me to screw up. I don’t know. I just -- I never thought,” she emits a breathless laugh, sinking the line of her shoulder. “God, all this time, I’ve been thinking how _lucky_ I am. To have you. You’ve always been so wonderful to Henry, so wonderful to _me_. I never thought to wonder -- I let myself get so caught up in you -- I ignored every possible sign.”

“Regina,” Emma starts to say, helplessly lost, but Regina just breathes out the rest of her words, and slides away, slipping out of the kitchen and out of reach. Emma just watches her go, tracking her body until she becomes only a faint black figure in the dark.

In her heart, a dread like ice-water pumps in her blood, beating against her ribs; _it’s over, it’s over it’soverit’sover_

*

It's only a few lonely spattering of days more before she _gets it_.

It comes as a phone call.

A phone call on Regina’s _burner_ phone.

When Emma hears it, she’s playing half-heartedly with Henry, moving one of his Klingons across a springy mattress towards his wall of Stormtroopers and skirting over her own embarrassment as best as she can. At the soft trill of the phone, Emma pauses, straightening up with a frown.

“That’s weird,” Emma grunts, and gets up a little stiffly. “Hey kid, keep an eye on him for me.” she says, and chuckles when Henry only nods knowingly and rests his chin on the mattress beside her Klingon.

Moving toward the table, she hesitates briefly at the bathroom door. With a few fingers, she pushes open the door to peek in, catching a glimpse of Regina through the cloudy glass. She is standing with her head tilted up towards the water, carefully washing soap from her black, black hair.

A throb of longing cements her there for a beat longer, but only until she hears the next trill of the phone and decides against telling her (cowardly, she doesn’t want to see the daggers that Regina’s eyes have become). She merely pushes forward again.

Picking up the phone, she frowns briefly at the screen.

Placing it on her ear, she says. “Yeah? Who is this?”

There’s a moment of silence. Someone stirs, the quiet full of the soft, electric whir of static.

And then, with a strange hint of amusement, a woman asks. “Hello? Who are you?”

Emma rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I  think you got the wrong number, lady.

She’s about to disconnect the call when off the side of her ear, she hears the woman make a cold little sound -- maybe a laugh, but it sounds different, stripped of even the slightest hint of warmth.

“No, I don’t think I do.” the woman says.

There’s something about her voice that puts Emma on edge. Something immensely cold and unkind -- a playful sort of meanness that sinks far deeper than simple unpleasantries.

Glancing once more to the bathroom door, Emma positions the phone back on her ear, “Who is this?” she asks again, a little more cautiously.

“Oh, I think you can guess,” the woman chuckles. “I’m assuming you’re the one that’s been helping my daughter slip so successfully from my radar, yes?”

Her knees weaken, for the worst reasons. A dread like ice water spills into her heart.

“How?” she rasps.

The woman hums faintly, the deep calm of superiority in her voice -- she knows she’s won. “Well, I knew Regina must have found _some_ kind of help. I had been tracking her for a few days, waiting for some inevitable stall to keep her in one place. And then, just like that, she disappeared. Dropped right off my radar.”

Standing alone in the kitchen, Emma can hear the shaky skim of her breathing, the reliability of her terrified heart, whispering: _be careful now, be careful._ It knows the cruelty waiting in some parents’ hearts.

“I was starting to think she would run forever,” the woman sighs. Her voice, spoken too closely, makes the connection pop, grow thin. “And then, just yesterday, she popped up again.”

Emma swallows. “Okay,” she says, and slowly sinks down into one of the kitchen chairs. She thinks: _I can still fix this_. With the flat of her palm, she presses against all the worry wrinkling top of her forehead. “Why? How?”

There is another sigh, sounding surprisingly dull, as if the boring predictability of her daughter’s actions is more disappointing than her rebellion. “Oh, she just bought some overpriced Maternity test with her credit,” She says, and clucks her tongue. “Silly girl. She must have known it’d be a risk. She even left this number for the agency, so that they could contact her again -- it was hardly any work at all to get it from them.”

But Emma isn’t following along anymore. Her heart sputters, shifting in her chest like an old engine.

“She...she paid for a maternity test.” Emma hears her own voice like she might hear a stranger’s. 

“Yes,” Emma can hear the smile in her voice, her pleasure in plucking even the meekest grasp of hope in a heart, like pulling weeds from the dirt. “I really don’t see why. She must have already suspected the truth. I mean, to have sent in hair samples on the same day of her request -- she was more than prepared to have it come back true.”

Emma just nods blankly, her head a vast, empty space.

After a moment, the woman makes a quiet noise. It sounds like a purr of pleasure.

“Come now, Miss Swan,” she smiles. “ You can’t truly be surprised.”

Her stomach clenches, hardening into a tiny ball. Like a movie reel, she rolls back her memories, the last few lonely days flipping through her head. There is Regina’s cool, icy stares, the silences before bed, their bodies remaining completely remote to each other, like opposites sides of a shore -- never touching.

“No,” she whispers. “I guess I’m not.”

Silence finds them. Emma stares out the window, at the asphalt road, rolling away into trees and a few scattered, shabby porches. It’s still early enough in the morning for the headlights of passing cars to throw out a space of brightened air.

“You know, Miss Swan,” Regina’s mother’s voice returns her to the moment, sounding smooth and practiced, dangerous. Emma’s heart clenches with recognition. “I think you and I might be able to help each other.”

She hums a flat, uncaring note, “I don’t think so.”

“Dear, you want to be a part of Henry’s life, don’t you?” Just the slight, indirect implication of being gone from them, from mother and child both, has her leaning hard on her knees, struggling to breathe through the crushing wreckage of her heart. “Oh, you poor dear. You must know, at this point, that you’re looking down at what might very easily turn into a restraining order.”

“You don’t know that.” But she hears the thinness in her own voice. Restraining order or not, Regina has already started the brutal process of removing Emma from the warm continent of her heart.

“I know my daughter, Miss Swan,” the woman sighs, a hint of exasperation in her voice. “She will do just about anything to keep that boy in her life. She’ll throw you away in a second, if she thought you posed a danger. Which, considering her recklessness -- I don’t doubt she does.”

Emma just slowly nods, staring down at the road beneath her window, staring at the early morning darkness where the red lozenges of stranger’s taillights pass along the road until they gradually disappear again.

“Miss Swan, I can help you stay in Henry’s life.” The woman’s voice comes to her from a distance, far away. “Don’t you want that? To know that he will always be safe? To know for sure that he will be happy?”

There’s a wavering silence. In the other room, she can hear Henry still playing, trying to mimic the deeper, slightly monotonic voice she uses for all his Stormtroopers.

“He will be.” Emma says, then. Then she hangs up.

The rest happens quickly, without thought, like muscle memory.

She doesn’t make much of a scene. When Henry looks up at her, she just smiles, waves his questioning worry away. “I’ll be there in a second, kid.” she says, and stands up, popping open the back of the phone. Pinching out the small black sims card, she bends it in half a few times, until it splits.

There, she drops the two halves into the kitchen sink. Washes it away, staring at the water as it swirls around the silver drain.

A whole life. A whole family.

Plucking a pen from Regina’s purse, she walks to the small desk drawer beside their bed where a thinly-lined notebook rests. When she bends over, resting on the flat of her arm, setting the pen to the pad, she feels the first tremble of her heart -- like a crack on a weakening dam. But if she lets herself slow down, lets herself think about it, she won’t move another step.

On the paper she writes in a messy scrawl: _Your mother knows where you are. Get a new phone. Don’t use your card anymore._

She rips the page out, but feeling the slight shake of her fingers, she hesitates. There’s space enough to write _I love you_ or _I’m sorry_ , but she knows Regina won’t believe her, and she wants to write something that will be tucked away in the heart, even if the paper is crumpled and tossed away the moment she’s gone. Stalling, she stares until the blue ink in front of her eyes starts to blur, wavering, losing some of its shape.

At the bottom, she writes: _Go to the beach._ Gently, she sets the paper beside Regina's purse, where it will hopefully be noted before her absence is.

But when she’s reached the door, she hears Henry’s voice. Looking back, she sees him standing shyly in the hallway, still clutching the Klingon in a tiny fist.

“Emma?” he calls, uncertainly. “Are we gonna finish the game?”

She makes a noise. A soft, choking sound. “Sorry buddy, not today,” she says, and can’t quiet manage a smile through the crumbling of everything, breaking apart tile-by-tile around her, like a wall of water bursting in through the windows and doors, sweeping through her life and carrying all that matters out with it. She sucks in a sharp, ragged breath. “Another time, alright?” an odd little laugh leaves her. “I promise -- next time, I won’t answer the phone.”

Henry frowns in confusion. “Emma?” he asks, as she moves toward the door. “Emma? Emma!”

She can hear his tiny little feet running, but she doesn’t let herself stop, not until she’s out into the bright, cold air, and closing the door. It clicks shut, leaving behind her, in a crummy little motel, the small box of her belongings, a red leather jacket, a boy, and his mother --  all that she has ever loved.

Sucking in a breath, she keeps walking.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish so much that I could say the next chapter is coming soon but IT'S NOT I'M SORRY, i got accepted into a grad program, and will be extremely busy for the next year. That being said, I will absolutely be finishing this story! it just might take a little while!!
> 
> thank you again to all that read and review! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reaching the end! The next chapter should be up soon. Leave a little review if you enjoyed!


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